The Mysteries of Marcie Fleach: Chapter 7-Catspaw
by Sketchpad
Summary: Marcie and a new friend find something fishy going on in Ocean Land when a monster haunts its halls and Crystal Cove!
1. Chapter 1

The near-silence felt awkward, almost painful.

The taps and scrapes of forks on plates sounded like the only things heard to Marcie from her side of the dinning room table as she and her father ate breakfast that weekend morning, except it sounded more determined from Winslow's side.

"Hope I didn't make too much scrambled egg, Dad," Marcie said, for conversation's sake. "Don't want you having to buy a bigger car if you can't fit in the old one."

"It's fine," her father muttered to his food.

Breakfast normally didn't make her feel like some guilty act breezed between the two of them and left its stink behind.

"Thanks," she said. "Um, y'know, Eleanor told me about the ride malfunction at the park. It's the weekend. I can check it out for you. Y'know, before the inspectors do. Is that okay?"

Winslow took another bite and waited until he swallowed to say, in a wooden voice, "That's all right, Marcie. It's their job, not yours. You don't have to, if you don't want to. You probably have other things to do."

Marcie could feel this frustrating distance grow, if only by another inch. As if she were trying to hold on to a greased rope, and failing.

Inspiration, she felt, to try harder.

"Probably," she shrugged. "But it wouldn't take too much time to do. Besides, I've done it tons of times in the past to help the park for you."

Her father continued to eat and didn't reply.

"How much you wanna bet it's some sorta metal fatigue? We better give the customers low-fat food so we can save the rides, huh?" she joked.

"That's all right, I said," Winslow told her, evenly. "I can handle this. You've helped enough."

That sounded more accusatory than gracious in Marcie's ears. She felt as small as she did whenever she displeased her father in some way during her younger years. What was wrong?

She felt confused but decided to drop the subject.

"Okay, Dad."

She bowed her head and wondered if she did so to finish eating or because of the dour air between father and daughter that she couldn't understand.

 _'It's probably just stress from the job,'_ she finally thought to herself. _'The ride breaking down. That's it.'_

Marcie stood up and took her plate with her towards the kitchen, but then stopped beside the still quietly eating Winslow. She put an understanding hand upon one of his to comfort him before he would leave for work.

"It'll be all right, Dad," she said to him, gently focusing all of her love into the gesture.

His hand felt hard, like stone.

That told her more than anything in their talk at the table that he couldn't or didn't want to be comforted by anything right now.

His daughter made her exit and quietly walked into the kitchen.

* * *

The late morning lit Marcie's bedroom with a strong, enlightening glow that gave her some hope that the day could get better for her before she went into her lab to tinker.

On her bed, she lied upon her stomach, gave her lean body a stretch, and then opened up her laptop.

'I hope she's there,' Marcie thought with quiet anticipation.

It took a few minutes of anxious waiting, but then, the familiar face of Velma Dinkely moved into view in front of her webcam, and Marcie breathed a grateful sigh.

"Hey, V!" Marcie said with a beaming smile. "How are you doing?"

It was hard to determine on screen, but it looked as if Velma was furtive, caught off-guard, somehow. "I'm doing okay. Why are you calling?"

The question gave Marcie a slight pause. "Well, I just wanted to talk to you. I shouldn't have to have a special reason, do I? Are you busy?"

"Uh, a little bit, Marcie," Velma explained. "We're in the middle of a pretty big case, so we're laying low for a little while so we won't get caught by the creep that we suspect is the criminal."

She guiltily glanced about the opulent hotel room that Daphne shared with her and whose parents graciously provided. There was no case and no perpetrator to sniff out at the moment. The Mystery Machine simply broke down in their entry of Missouri and managed to make it to Kansas City.

"Oh, okay," Marcie said, half-hidden depression coloring her words. "Well, let me know when you guys are done, all right? I've got some weird stories to tell you about what happened to me and some friends since you left. Man, I tell ya. Crystal Cove's been getting crazy lately, y'know?"

Velma's face tensed. "Um, I... don't know if I...can talk to you for a while."

An icy stab of worry pierced Marcie deep. "Why? What's wrong?"

"Nothing! It's nothing," Velma quickly said, her eyes darting momentarily from her screen, the words choking in her throat as she spoke them. "It's...just that...um, we've...got to, uh..."

Then she remembered the mysterious man whom Mystery Inc. had been seeing on several cases, state to state, so far. "We have to, I mean, _I_ have to stop my webchats with you for a while because we're being followed by someone."

The worry changed into concern for Marcie after hearing that. "Who?"

"We don't know who he is, but every now and then, we see him from a distance. In the shadows. He could be working for some secret organization, for all we know, and might be monitoring anything we say or even transmit."

Marcie nodded to herself in comprehension. "So you've gotta maintain radio silence around this guy. I get it. So...you don't know when you can talk to me again?"

"No," Velma said with hardening resolve in the lie. "I'm sorry, Marcie. I hope you'll understand."

The wind was taken completely from Marcie's sails, yet she was buoyed by a pained maturity that she was determined to show to her friend.

"Yeah, I understand," she said, trying to find a reason to smile, but then decided not to even fake one, and so, quitted. "I still wish I can talk to you, but if it's getting too dangerous for it, then I guess we'll have to take a rain check on that until we can again."

"Yeah," Velma agreed, inwardly feeling defeated. "But don't worry. It shouldn't take long and then I can hear all of those stories you wanted to tell me, okay?"

"Okay."

Velma turned her attention away, hearing a soft knock from off-screen.

"Well, I better go. I think I heard Freddy and the others calling me. You take care of yourself, Marcie. Okay?" she asked, glad that Marcie couldn't see her teeth clenching through her speech.

Marcie's head dipped in inward sadness. Why did it feel like the loneliness that she escaped from in her young life, thanks to dearest Velma, was making a return with a vengeance?

"Sure thing, V," she said quietly. "You take care, too. All right?"

"All right. I'll see ya."

"Okay."

It was too much. Velma mercifully ended the link, and then a chunk of granite replaced her stomach, if not her heart. The girl who had cared for her with every online chat was cut off from her with all the emotionless purpose of a surgeon removing a tumor. Set adrift from her life with a keystroke.

She sat on her hotel bed, trying to force her conflicting feelings down into the cast-iron vault of logic that she worked so long and hard to build.

 _'She is not the Marcie that I know, I mean,_ knew _,'_ she reminded herself, with all the steely tone of a judge passing sentence. _'That Marcie is gone. My_ world _is gone. My reward for doing the right thing. Spending the rest of my life in this hell. Familiar, but not. Meeting people who only_ look _like my family, my friends.'_

Velma sadly shuffled on the plush living room sofa and stared at the laptop on her lap.

 _'Yes, we did the right thing by leaving Crystal Cove. Ugh! I hate that I still remember that name and...I hate that this Marcie just won't move on. I think I know how she feels about me, but I had to do it. I had to cut her off. I couldn't keep leading her on like this anymore. Making her think I'm the Velma of this world, wherever_ she _is. And...I think I hate myself the most for that.'_

Then she remembered the knock from earlier. "Come in," she called out.

"Hey, Velm," said Shaggy from the opened door. "Just heard from Freddy. We can get the Mystery Machine fixed up and hit the road again. Good thing Daphne's folks paid for the hotel stay and the repairs on the van, huh?"

"Huh?" Velma muttered to herself in reply. "Oh, yeah. Thanks for the head's-up."

"Velma," he said, softly, but his concern wasn't noticed by her. So, for a few moments, he continued to soberly watch from the doorway the bespectacled girl staring morosely at her still opened computer.

* * *

The air conditioned hall soothed Marcie as she watched the marine life move with their natural grace behind the tempered glass of the expansive aquariums that gave Ocean Land its local Californian fame.

A pang of depression hit her once again, so she focused on the manta rays as they glided past a school of tiny fish blessed with an almost unnatural brilliance of yellow.

She decided that she did the right thing by coming here. The scientist in her shook her head at the notion that she lived with and knew her father long enough to know when he felt a certain way, but the daughter in her couldn't help but pick up on the distant coldness that Winslow gave off.

In her mind, she knew that it couldn't last. Mainly because she didn't like the feeling and wanted it resolved in the best way possible.

 _'I'm smart enough to wait,'_ she thought. _'I'll wait 'till there's a good time to bring it up and I'll talk to him about it.'_

With a sigh, Marcie went back to studying the school of tuna that moved along before departing further into the depths of the tank.

For a moment, she was spared from thoughts of home when she thought back to her excursion in _Tanks! Alot!_ , the company that manufactured, among other things, aquariums. Past cases had brought a secret smile to her face. It was the satisfaction of proving herself smarter and more capable than the mysteries that stood before her.

Ever since she was very young, she knew that she was a performer. With the separation of her parents, she felt that she needed to either impress or prove herself to the people in her life.

Popularity wasn't something she was good at, and yet, science, chemistry, computers, and these odd, recent mysteries were things that she found that she was good at. That people knew from her, that she could prove herself to the world with.

Marcie glanced about the room at the crowds that took in the fish. Business was fair to brisk here and she hoped that she wouldn't get swallowed by the multitude while trying to watch more of the aquariums.

She managed to catch a glimpse of a great white shark and stood mesmerized at the sheer presence of the animal as it cruised slowly, with an almost calculated speed, up to the glass.

She knew that the glass was sufficiently strong enough to contain the predator, but she let herself feel the thrill of fear as the shark approached her. The sensation made her smile and forget her earlier troubles.

So much so, that she almost missed the volume of the surrounding people's chatter rise in what ultimately became the peaks and valleys of consternation.

Marcie looked around and saw people jumping and running apart in fearful, confused groups from something near a wide doorway that was led somewhere deeper into the building, perhaps maintenance-related.

She wanted to get herself into some defensive position to whatever was making the crowds agitated, but she couldn't see what they were reacting to. All she did know was that the commotion was surging her way.

Marcie backed up anxiously and suddenly felt something soft bump hard against her heels. Thinking that she had collided against someone's feet, she tried to correct her retreat, but lost her balance, tumbling backwards into seated crash.

She landed on her backside, hard enough to dislodge her glasses. She could hear them clatter nearby but her vision was filled with moving blurs that looked like they were moving further from her.

Marcie's hands probed the floor in search of her spectacles, until she felt them above it. Someone must have picked them up for her. Someone with hairy knuckles, she thought.

"Thanks," Marcie said while opening the handles of her glasses.

"You're quite welcome," said the nearby voice. "Hmmph! You'd think in this day and age, people wouldn't react so when they saw a cat."

Marcie puts her glasses on and looks around, seeing that most of the patrons had left the room while she looked for the person who helped her.

"Is that what was going on?" she asked. "I guess they were just worked up because a cat was running around in the building."

She then looked to where she was hearing the voice and just saw...the cat.

Her mind couldn't help but piece the scene together, and it still came out as incredulous this time as it did the last. The voice came from the direct location of the Siamese cat that sat beside her.

"Whoa! Wait! You're-You're talking?" Marcie said, shaking her head in shock and surprise. "I thought Scooby...Never mind. Who are you? Where did you come from?"

"I am called Schrödinger," said the feline.

Marcie almost laughed at the name. "Like...the cat?"

"Yes, like the cat," he sighed at the reference. "And where I formerly came from was the basement of this temple of temptation. Honestly, fish as far as the eye could see, and yet the only one I keep running into is that wretched Sea Beast."

Marcie scrunched her up-turned nose quizzically. "Sea Beast? What's that?"

A gargling roar boomed from the doorway where Schrödinger had left. A broad, tall, humanoid fish crossed its threshold, fast tentacles probing the air from its finned back. The pong of the deep sea proceeded it and it was festooned in loose seaweed. Clawed, webbed hands flexed, eager to rend anything in front of it, and sulfurous eyes searched for prey. And found it in Marcie.

The cat raised a paw and pointed at the creature.

"That, my dear, is a Sea Beast," Schrödinger said calmly.


	2. Chapter 2

_2~_

With the gallery already vacated, the two trapped patrons found it much easier to evade the creature, as they ran from pillar to post, or, more technically, from wall to panoramic tank and back.

"What's that thing doing here?" Marcie managed to ask before ducking a forceful, yet clumsy, swipe from the creature, towards her face. Its claws, instead, striking across the acrylic face of a tank that she had back up against, not breaching it, but leaving deep furrows that could be easily seen.

"It was lurking, I suppose," Schrödinger surmised. "I believe it has the look of a lurker."

The two momentarily split up to different sides of the room, hoping to make being captured an even harder task for the monster.

"Why is after you?" she asked from her side. "You felt ambitious one day and tried to eat it?"

"Hardly," the cat sniffed, after scampering away from between the Sea Beast's thick legs. "I only snuck into the basement last week looking for shelter and something to eat. We ran into each other, there, and he's, obviously, been trying to eat me ever since!"

Marcie stopped by one of the corners that was made up of a wall and one of the aquariums and opened up her arms when Schrödinger leaped away from the Sea Beast's close grasp.

"Up here," she said. And with that the Siamese bounded over to her and jumped into her arms.

The Sea Beast turned and stomped towards the duo with menace, closing the distance in the room.

Marcie decided that this chase had lasted long enough and slipped a hand into her jacket.

"Can you hold your breath?" she asked Schrödinger.

"I suppose. Why?"

* * *

Sheriff Stone's large, khaki-colored frame made him stand out among his subordinate deputies, the rattled patrons, an Ocean Land security guard, and two lab-coated scientists, all gathered in safety and concern outside the main entrance of the building.

The guard walked over to the front doors and reached out to open them, when they suddenly swung open on their own accord with some urgency. A coughing Marcie and an armful of hacking cat hurried outside, trailing thick, acrid smoke that filled half the forward gallery's interior, the released contents of one of her Discouragers.

Some distance from the entrance, Marcie hunched over, hands on knees, as Schrödinger hopped out of her arms, allowing her to catch her breath.

"You've got a...monster in there," she wheezed to the guard she had just beaten to the door.

"Monster?" he reflexively asked. "Him again?"

Wanting to see for himself, the guard stepped in and stood as far inside the threshold as he deemed safe, while outdoor breezes flowed in, causing the smoke to swirl, and then dissipate.

When the miasma finally faded, it became clear enough to see, but he could see nothing inside. No creature or beast. However, green stained paw prints and claw marks patterned the walls and tanks, and tell-tale strips of seaweed were strewn all over the floor, along with wet, muddy tracks that proceeded them.

"Do you see it?" asked a recovering Marcie.

"There's nothing there," the guard said. "If he was there, he left his tracks everywhere."

"Trust me," Marcie said, glancing back at the building's facade. "That thing gave us a workout back there."

"The Sea Beast struck again, huh?" asked the younger of the two scientists present, flippantly.

His partner, a balding, older colleague, gave a scowl as the preamble to his reply. "Never mind that nonsense. Focus on why we called the police in the first place."

"Hey, maybe the two are connected," the younger scientist shrugged.

"Do you mind?" said the other, wondering what was wrong with him that he would be so blassie about this very critical issue. "We have to deal with this."

Stone brought up his hands in a peacekeeping gesture, already tired of the argument between him. "Okay, okay, citizen. What was missing again?"

"Our sturgeon eggs," said the older scientist.

"You mean, like...fish eggs?" asked the sheriff, confusion dawning into annoyance.

"Yes," came the straight-faced reply.

Stone didn't know whether to laugh or yell in the man's face. Then, he made his decision.

"Fish eggs?" he yelled at the man. "That's what you called me down here for? Live bait?"

"Please, don't shout," the elder scientist bade him while trying to rub the tension from his temples "It's bad enough that this Sea Beast business is disrupting our research and the customers' enjoyment of this place, but our canister of rare, super-endangered sturgeon eggs from Russia turns up missing, as well. However, I'd rather you deal with the eggs than...than it."

The sheriff couldn't believe the situation he found himself.

 _'Science-types!'_ he screamed in his head _. 'No good_ ever _comes from them!'_ Then, he pointed a thick, accusing finger at Marcie, nearby. "That's what you should've called _her_ for."

He fully turned to her and vented. "You do this sorta thing behind our backs all the time, don'tcha, Mary?"

"That's Marcie," she calmly corrected him.

Stone ignore her and continued his rant. "Whatcha gonna call this one? Don't tell me! Don't tell me! The Case of the Missing Caviar?"

"No, no," Marcie deadpanned. "You keep that one. That's way too good for me."

Now it was the older scientist's turn to raise his hands to stop the two of them from arguing.

"Please, people!" he begged.

"Wait a minute," Stone asked suspiciously, a conspiratorial thought just entering his head. "I thought this was just an aquarium. Why are you _scientists_ working here?"

"Ocean Land houses the Arthur Ingstrom Marine Research Laboratory, as well," the elder scientist explained. "We're kind of behind-the-scenes, here."

"That's a shame," Marcie remarked. "The people should get a chance to see you guys in action, too. Let them see that science and Ocean Land go together, hand-in-hand."

"Maybe you're right, dear," the scientist sighed with long-suffering frustration. "But these Sea Beast sightings keep scaring away the customers from here. There won't be an Ocean Land or a research lab to house, if this keeps up."

"Ugh! Enough of this egg-headed malarkey," Stone moaned, wanting to get back on topic. "And what's a Sea Beast?"

"It's just some urban legend around the aquarium," the younger scientist told him. "See, in the sixties, scientist were said to have been working on gene splicing and whatnot, and one night they created a chimera, a life-form made from genes from one sea animal, here, another sea animal, there. They called it the Sea Beast. Legend has it that it broke out of the labs and has been stalking the lower floors of Ocean Land ever since."

Although the tale was short, Stone found himself biting the broad brim of his hat in fear, his imagination running far away from him. He couldn't help but think...what if it were real?

"Don't worry, Sheriff," chuckled the young scientist. "Like I said, it's just an urban legend among us scientists. Shame we haven't caught the Beast and made him an attraction, though. He could've had this place packed."

"Oh, yeah?" his older co-worker grumbled. "Look inside the gallery. Look at the mess. That doesn't look like a legend to me. Administration will have to close the place down to the public and I don't know what that'll mean to the labs."

He then focused his disquiet on Stone. "And in the meantime, Sheriff Stone, when you're through dinning on your hat, are you and your men going to find out what happened to our canister?"

"Not to worry, citizen. For although you wasted my time with what I can almost deem a crank call, I will, thanklessly, do my civic duty for you," Stone announced, puffing up his chest in self-importance. "Yes, even though I could have been summoned somewhere else on something far more important that finding your smelly fish eggs, I, _Sheriff Bronson Stone_ , will devote my resources and my vast crime-fighting skill to locating them."

"Hmm," Schrödinger purred to Marcie. "I can see why you would do his job for him."

"Who said that?" Stone asked in a wail.

Marcie pointed to the ground near her feet. "He did."

Instead of marveling at the notion of a talking cat, Stone's frustration had him stomp up and point a warning finger at the feline.

"Hey, you!" he said to the nonplussed puss. "Nobody likes a sassy cat."

Then, after pointing that same finger at Marcie, he warned her, "And you! You better keep an eye on your pussy, Melissa."

"That's Marcie and that's not...my..." she sighed, stopped herself from responding to what certainly didn't sound right, but by then, he and his men had started to leave.

As the security guard began to sheppard the patrons in the direction of the parking lot, the older scientist turned to follow his colleague back into the aquarium, when he caught sight of some one in crowd and his ire returned.

"You!" he called out to a man in a tailored suit. "What are you doing here?"

The man stopped and turned to the scientist with a smarmy smile, confident in his answer to the question.

"Now, Redding, there's no crime in checking out the little fishies, now is there?" he asked.

"That's _Doctor_ Redding, to you," the scientist fumed. "Why are you here? I thought I told you that you can't have any samples of our fish egg specimens for your new flavors."

"You know that I was only joking about that," the sharp-dressed man said. "I wouldn't dream of touching your precious eggs. How could I? I've got problems of my own, setting up my own cat food company."

"Cat food?" Schrödinger perked up. "Now that's a man who sounds near and dear to my heart. Who is he?"

Marcie shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I'll ask him for yo-"

"Excuse me," Schrödinger spoke up. "I am only a humble connoisseur, but I was wondering who you might be and what sort of brave new flavors were you going to shower on the cat food market?"

The businessman glanced over to their general location, directing his pitch towards Marcie. "Well, little lady, since you asked-"

"I didn't," Marcie corrected him, pointing, once again to the ground near her feet.

He looked askance. "Oh! Heh. Normally, it would be you, as a customer, that I'd be telling this to," he told her, but then, as an incredulous courtesy, he directed his words to the cat.

"Never seen a talking cat before," he found himself saying to him.

"Well, prior this week," Schrödinger said smoothly. "I've never seen a giant, marauding fish before. Life is full of curiosities."

"Yeah, I guess so," the man agreed, uncertain of how to take the cat's comment. Then, because he was feeling rather uncomfortable having to chat with a cat, he decided to direct his conversation back to the human girl.

"Anyway, I'm Chas Andrews, I used to be co-owner of Tabby Tummy Cat Foods. I'm starting my own company, but because of the competition, I have to set myself apart. Other cat food companies say that they've got gourmet flavors, but I wanted to make some _real_ gourmet foods for the company. Y'know, like dolphin, turtle, whale-"

"Or maybe, rare sturgeon?" asked Marcie. "I'd say shark, but, professional courtesy and all that."

"That would be nice," Chas said, either not catching or ignoring the jibe. "But, hey, it's like I told the good doctor. I wouldn't grab his eggs, though if he ever did get a hold of 'em for me, I'd cut him in for a percentage of the profits. Heck, I might even make him a partner in my new company. In charge of finding wild, new species for the business, you understand."

With a corporate smirk, he looked back at the cat.

"Hey, how would you like to be my company spokesperson, little fella? You can be like that parrot who talks for Creationex. You'd have all the cat food you wanted. Heck, you could even be my number one taste-tester."

Schrödinger's eyes grew wide in avaricious thought and a greedy grin bring his whiskers up at the sides. Then, another thought made him slowly cock his head to one side, and he looked up at Marcie.

"What do you think?" he asked her, which made the girl cock _her_ head to one side, as well, in slight confusion.

"About what?" she asked him with a shrug. "You're not my cat. You can do whatever you want."

"I know, but I have always prided myself on being a good judge of character and I value your thoughts, Marcie," he said to her.

With a sigh, she looked over to the company owner. "I don't know, Mr. Andrews. Uh, we'll let you know if we ever come to a decision."

"Fair enough," he said, considering the matter closed and then strolling over to his lengthy car. "Well, I gotta be going. Cat food waits for no man...or cat!"

As the people began starting their cars and driving away to better weekend venues, Marcie and Schrödinger were left alone, the girl giving a slight frown to the cat.

"I don't know why you're so interested in _me_ ," she groused, heading for the parking lot.

"At the moment," Schrödinger explained, as he quietly followed her. "I figured since we've both faced certain death, and from the look on your face, you haven't a friend in the world, a bit of company would be nice."

Marcie reddened. She was angry that her emotions were so easy to see, that even some alley cat could make them out. She stopped and gave him a glance that was equal parts sad, insecure, and defensive. "I don't need a pet in my life."

"I don't actually need people in mine," he countered, easily. "I was just trying to be charitable."

"I don't need charity, _Schroeder_ ," Marcie said, purposely saying his name wrong as an mild insult before getting into her car. "Go find someone else to hang out with. The last thing I need is some talking cat lady start-up kit."

She slid the key into the ignition and was preparing to turn it when she looked into her rear view mirror and saw the cat's little head pop up from the back seat, giving her a start.

"That's Schrödinger, _Marigold_ ," he replied. "Besides, I'm between places, now that the Sea Beast has essentially forced me out."

"I guess he's a better guard that the ones they've got, since you're not supposed to be there. Now, get out of my car!

"Well, yes, technically, that's true," he admitted, ignoring her. "However, I would like to offer an interesting proposition."

"Which is?" Marcie slowly asked. She was learning to be suspicious of this fast-talker.

"You get rid of that noisome creature and I'll leave you be," Schrödinger said, simply.

"Here's a counter-proposal," Marcie said, not wanting to get involved with cats or monsters on a weekend. "You get out of my car, now, and I won't drive to the Pacific Coast Highway and throw you out... _while I'm still moving_."

The cat laughed the threat away and continued. "Oh, honestly, Marcie. Why are you behaving like this? We both know that you could solve this immediate problem just like that. You certainly have the brains for it. And that incompetent sheriff is obviously jealous of that. Besides, I've been in town long enough to have known of your...exploits."

That gave Marcie some pause. How would he know about anything she had done? "What are you talking about?''

"Hmm, modest, too," he said, taking a bracing breath of the nearby sea air. "Let's see...Defeating that criminal hypnotist, helping out the Wacky Races Reality Show, handling that chop-shop operation, and the kidnapping, and that nasty bit of business in Gatorsburg. Oh, and let's not forget, foiling that terrorist group, PERIL? You would have made Agent Samson proud. Err, have I left anything out?"

"How do you know about all that? Have you been keeping tabs on me, cat?"

"I just read a lot," he assured her. "Now, will you come to my aid as you have so many others? Flush this monster down the proverbial drain, so that I, as a citizen of this fair town, may sleep, and perhaps eat, in peace?"

"Solving a mystery just so I can help you squat in a public place?" she reasoned aloud. "I'm sure there's a law against that. Besides, didn't you say earlier that you didn't need people in your life? What do you call this?"

"I said I didn't need _people_. That's plural," the cat corrected her. "You are a person. Singular. Besides, you needn't worry. I'll take care of the squatter's issue, myself. You'll never be blamed. Now, do I have your word?"

Marcie gave some thought before she said anything that this cat could spin to his advantage. Then, she finally said to him, "Well, since I don't really want a cat, I guess you do have my word. But what makes you think I'll keep it?"

"Like I said before. I pride myself on being a good judge of character. You've proven in the past to be of good character to the people of Crystal Cove, so I trust you."

 _'Damn, you'd be a hell of a lawyer,'_ she thought, blushing at the well-said and unexpected compliment.

"Well...since you put it like that..." she sighed in acquiescence. "I can't believe it, but I guess I can help you."

"Excellent!" he said, before curling up on one of the back seat's cushions.

"One thing, though," Marcie said.

"Yes?"

"You're in my car. If you scratch my upholstery, back there, I'll redo the seats with your hide," she told him with smiling menace.

With a quiet gulp, the cat murmured, "Understood."

With that, she took the key from the ignition and thoughtfully looked back at Ocean Land.

"Guess I'm not going home after all," Marcie said with a sigh.


	3. 3

_3~_

The steely double doors of the main entrance opened with a crack, then, wide enough for Marcie and Schrödinger to slip through.

"Good," she whispered. "They didn't lock the doors yet."

When they passed into the main gallery, they found it deserted, unguarded and still littered with the leavings and destruction from the creature. Marcie went over to a moist pile of seaweed that sat by the base of one of the main tanks and picked up one of the strands.

After rubbing it experimentally between her fingers, she decided to take it back to her lab for a quick analysis, but then frowned when she realized that she didn't have any suitable container for it.

"Yuck," she muttered as she carefully inserted it into one of her jacket pockets.

The only other soul there was an near-elderly janitor scrubbing the Sea Beast's greenish handprints from an otherwise immaculate wall.

Walking by his cleaner and bucket-laden cart, Marcie remarked to him, "I guess you get used to cleaning up behind Godzilla all the time, huh?"

The janitor stopped his work and replied with a weary smile, "Aww, this is nothing. A few months ago there were some fifth-graders here on a field trip. One got sick and started this puke chain reaction. One kid after the other. Whew! _That_ was a bad day."

The janitor picked up a scrub brush, but then stopped to shake his graying head with tired amusement. "That ol' Sea Beast sure likes to make a scene. Heard he's been stompin' around here since the sixties."

"Have you seen him, yourself?" asked Marcie.

The man's voice went low. "Don't tell nobody, but I see him once or twice. I love to go fishin', but I'll tell you that was the biggest thing I ever saw."

"Where?"

"Once in the basement when I was gettin' some cleanin' supplies and the other time near the loadin' dock. I count myself lucky every time. What? You trying to look for him?"

"Strangely enough, yes."

"Well, he probably went back down into the basement. Shoot! I've been running my jaws too much. Gotta get back to work or I won't be finished before lunch. You look like you probably won't cause no harm, but stay away from that Sea Beast, or you might live to regret it."

"You wouldn't happen to know where the laboratories are?" asked Schrödinger, wanting to change the subject.

Either the janitor didn't notice the cat speak or didn't care where the question arose, because he answered it all the same. "Down the hall and up those circular stairs." He then added wryly, "Don't tell 'em I sent ya, though. I like my job too much."

"Don't worry. We won't. Thanks," said Marcie, then she gave a quick salute to the custodian and quipped, "Carry on."

* * *

 _'Things like theft and rampant monsters make the shutdown of a laboratory,_ my _laboratory, a possibility,'_ Doctor Redding fretted in thought.

He then put such thoughts from his mind as he stood within his busy laboratory, gazing at its glass equipment-laden tables, dissection areas, and computers with a sense of wistfulness that bordered on the romantic. This was his world.

No one, he believed, had his level of scientific commitment or professionalism. They were either slackers, like his younger colleagues, elements that didn't belong, like the chaotic Sea Beast, or suspiciously didn't contribute to anything, like the town's incompetent sheriff.

Between the three of them, he wondered if he had made a mistake not accepting that position in Arkham, Massachusetts.

He gave another longing look at the environs of the lab again, but before he could daydream any further, he heard the doorknob twist with a soft click.

The door opened with a crack, wide enough for a thin, brunette girl and a Siamese cat to slip through and walk in as if they were expected, which to Redding, was certainly not the case.

"What I wouldn't do to have a set-up like this," Marcie said to herself, admiring the lab's environs.

"Much easier than how I first got in," Schrödinger admitted. "I just happened upon an opened door in the building's rear loading dock while I was sniffing around."

"Just start sniffing for security guards," Marcie said. "'Cause I don't know what I'm gonna tell them, if they catch us."

So involved were they in their conversation and sneaking, they didn't even notice Redding watching them move into his domain.

"Sometimes honesty is the best policy," said the cat.

"I'm sneaking around a closed aquarium on a Saturday afternoon because a cat made me do it?" Marcie quipped.

"I see your point."

They both froze to the sound of an annoyed cough from across the room.

"May I help you?" asked the doctor after listening to enough of their banter.

"I love your lab," Marcie said with an honest smile. "Who's your equipment supplier?"

"Why are you up here?" the doctor continued.

"You didn't lock up fast enough," said Marcie, matter-of-factly.

"Who are you? This place is off-limits."

Marcie changed her demeanor to one of innocent earnestness and walked up to him. "Margo Freep, Crystal Cove High Newspaper. I heard you said earlier about a rare canister going missing?"

The lie seemed to work when his mind was sidetracked by the mentioning of the theft. "No," he corrected. "I said a canister of rare _sturgeon eggs_. Err, do school reporters always work during the weekends?"

"A good scoop never takes the day off, sir," she deflected. "Now, about the fish eggs."

"They're rare," he explained. "The species is dying out. We were planning to raise enough of them to clone, so that when we introduced them into our breeding program, there would be enough of them to start bringing their numbers up."

Schrödinger hopped upon a stool and then onto a nearby table, then asked, "Apart from someone with obvious good taste, who would steal them? A rich, ruthless gourmand, perhaps?"

"Your cat is talking," Doctor Redding pointed out to Marcie with controlled surprise. "Did you know this?"

"Ignore him. He's an experiment gone horribly wrong," Marcie quipped before returning to her questions. "Now, it doesn't look like corporate espionage, you're not a company. Maybe it's another group of scientists wanting to get credit for what you guys are doing."

"Possibly, but we're the only ones with access to where the canister was kept," said Redding.

"Smells like an inside job, then," Marcie reasoned.

Redding's face slackened in dread. "You mean...it could be one of the research staff?"

"It could be a lab assistant," Schrödinger said, working the doctor's already frazzled nerves and fears with an innocent voice. " Or maybe an intern? You know you can never trust an intern."

"Not helping the case, dog chow," Marcie muttered to the feline before continuing. "You might have to take that up with security.

"Administration had," the doctor told her.

Before she asked a follow-up on that, another thought jumped across Marcie's mind and she seized it.

"Say, do you mind if I look around where the canister was last seen? My paper loves for me to get as much detail as possible before I write my stories."

The doctor fretted. The last thing he needed was for strangers to go poking around in restricted places, on top of what had already happened. But Marcie, or rather, Margo's sincerity, if not her sense of youthful zeal was becoming infectious. In his mind, he saw a little of himself in that.

"Alright," he sighed dramatically. "Never let it be said that Morris Redding didn't help out the young and hard-working, but I'll have to come with you."

"No problem," she said.

Marcie was enjoying the protection that Doctor Redding's presence provided as they walked down the hallways and the occasionally passing guard. As long as she was under the doctor's escort, security might have considered questioning the situation, but because it was too non-threatening to raise their suspicions, they never acted on it.

She and the cat slowed down when the scientist stopped by a door. When he opened it, Marcie gave an inward nod at what she saw inside.

In all honesty, it wasn't all that remarkable a room, visually. A large, very cool, sterile-smelling room flanked on either side by a wide work table and shelves of specimen and sample handling equipment. However, what drew Marcie's eye was the enormous steel door that dominated the center of the place. This, she surmised, was The Vault.

Essentially, a high-tech walk-in freezer with an even more technological keypad entry system, The Vault housed the most important and most sensitive material the labs worked with.

"Here it is," Redding announced. "The Vault. If it's alive, eventually it'll wind up here."

"Charming," Marcie quipped under her breath.

"All of our specimens and biological samples are stored here exclusively," the doctor explained.

"It's refrigerated, of course?" Schrödinger asked

Redding regarded the Siamese. "It has to be, or the eggs and other samples inside would spoil. But the canister has it's own refrigerator built in, in case of emergencies."

"How long does it last?" asked Marcie.

"We've always charged it, so it should last for about two weeks."

"It was stolen not too long ago, and it could be anywhere there's a refrigerator," Schrödinger figured. "Not much of a lead." He then urgently turned to Marcie. "Quick, Marcie! Go to all of the lunchrooms and check their refrigerators!"

Knowing that he was joking once again, she smiled with slight menace and regarded the doctor with a question.

"Doctor, does your Vault have room for a cat?"

"Oh, no. Marine animals only," he answered, surprisingly missing the point of the question. In spite of her respect for the man, Marcie hoped that she would never be this cut off from the world. She focused on her investigation.

"Does this place have cameras?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "All the labs and offices do. But security already checked the footage and they saw no one after the glitch."

That caught her attention. "What glitch?"

"They said that for a few seconds, they couldn't see anything in any of the monitors. Later, they said something about the system going through some test cycle, and then after that, everything checked out. Nothing was wrong."

That was suspicious in its own right, so Marcie pressed on, noticing the Vault's door.

"That keypad's the only way into The Vault?" she asked him.

"Yes, and only we scientists know the code."

That only cemented the notion that this was an inside job to her. Marcie was about ask further when she noticed Schrödinger sniffing around the corner behind them.

"What's up, Schro?" she asked, knowing it would needle him. It did.

" _Schro?_ " he sighed almost in disgust. "Anyway, I smell something by this corner."

"What is it?"

The cat tilted his head upward. "I don't know. It smells...odd, like a chemical of some sort."

Marcie turned to the scientist. "You don't store chemicals here, do you?"

"No," he said. "Just organic samples."

"Where on the corner, Schrödinger?"

He pointed a paw to one wall that made up the corner and stretched to a point midway up it. Marcie looked up but couldn't see anything incriminating.

"I'm gonna lift you up along the wall and you tell me where you smell whatever this is," Marcie said to Schrödinger as she gently lifted him from behind and slowly raised him along the surface of the wall.

Schrödinger sniffed quietly, swiveling his head to and fro to catch the scent. Then finally...

"There!" he signaled, then he called down. "Doctor Redding, do you have a pen so you could mark that spot?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes!" The scientist said, flustered at the urgency of the request, but after fumbling through his lab coat, he produced a pen. He then reached over and etched an x by the cat's head.

After she set Schrödinger down, Marcie herself reached over to see it, a spot of a substance sticking to the wall.

"Sir, do you have, like, a Petri dish or something?"

"Of course," Redding said, going over to one of the shelves on the side of the room. A Petri dish was given to the girl while Marcie took out her car keys.

"Thanks," she said while she lightly scraped the substance off with the key and then stored it in the dish.

"What are you going to do with that?" inquired Redding.

"We have a lab in the school. I'll take it over there for analysis on Monday," Marcie explained, feeling a little worried that lying was coming easier for her. True, there was a science lab there and, technically, analysis could be conducted therein, but it was all in the context. It always was.

Satisfied that all of her present questions were answered and her prevarications took her that far, Marcie gestured to Schrödinger to get ready to leave.

"Sir, on behalf of the Crystal Cove High Newspaper, I thank you for your cooperation and your time," Marcie, as Margo, said to Doctor Redding as she pocketed the Petri dish into her wool jacket.

She and the cat soon departed.

* * *

 _'Things didn't add up,'_ Marcie thought as she merged the Clue Cruiser into the inner, moderate traffic of town.

Beside her, curled in the front passenger seat, Schrödinger asked her, "Why were you asking questions about that jar of fish eggs? I could find those anywhere. I thought we were looking for the Sea Beast."

"We are when you weren't cracking wise," Marcie said. "In fact, there's nothing that says that we can't kill two birds with one stone."

That gave the cat pause. "What are you saying? That this theft and the Sea Beast's appearance are connected?"

"It could be."

"That makes no sense. If that were so, than why stay at the scene of the crime? Why not just go into the Pacific and enjoy his ill-gotten gain?"

"I don't know," she shrugged.

"You don't know?" He didn't want to hear that. "What sort of detective are you?"

"An honest one," Marcie defended.

"Nonsense," he sniffed. "You should always pretend that you know more than what's going on. It gives the onlooker the sense that you have everything under control. That is an ancient cat secret."

Marcie gave a quick glace at him. For all his cleverness and smooth words, this animal could irk her at times. "This just in! I'm not a cat. If I don't know anything yet, I'm not going to operate as if I did. That's dangerous. And that's a ancient _human_ secret."

Schrödinger gave in with a sighing harrumph, then decided to change the subject.

"So where are we going, _detective_?" he asked.

"I don't want to go home, yet," said Marcie. She knew there wasn't anyone there, but the bad breakfast was still fresh in her mind. Better to still tool around town some more until those feelings faded.

"I'll let you know when we get there," she told him.


	4. 4

_4~_

The cat's attention was drawn back and forth by the motion of contented people wandering about looking for the next entertainment.

Distractions. That's what this outdoor place provided its patrons. Things to see and do in a moment's notice. Speed, one place, rest and the enjoyment of food in another. And the freedom to sample and savor it all this weekend afternoon.

For a cat, these things appealed to him very much.

For Marcie, at the moment, she couldn't understand why she drove, perhaps subconsciously, over to Fleach's Folly Factory as she stood by her car in the parking lot.

But she was here and so she decided to make the most of it.

"I must confess," Schrödinger said, walking beside her. "I didn't think you would come to a place like this."

That struck Marcie as an odd thing to say. "Why?"

"Because it's too happy and still have a gloom about you."

Marcie sighed. Cats were reputed to very observant, but leave it to her to run into one that was psychoanalytical.

"My dad owns the place and I work here sometimes, but…maybe I needed to come here to cheer myself up. Or maybe I just needed to go someplace familiar to help me think," she told him and perhaps herself.

"Indeed," agreed the Siamese as they entered the park. "You do have a lot on your mind right now."

"Yeah."

With a silent decision not to talk for awhile, they walked along the park's thoroughfares, quietly taking in the sights.

After a while, Marcie slowed down by one of the park's old-time lampposts to rest. Then the sight of a Funny Frank, the park's mascot, a giant, bunned hot dog wearing a fool's cap, cartoonishly large gloves and a perpetual grin, came strolling by her, bringing a broad, nostalgic smile to her. One Schrödinger happened to notice.

"What brought that on?" he asked.

"Funny Frank," she said. "I'd walk up and down the park in one of those suits after school sometimes. Man, those things were hot. The only ventilation came from the sight holes in the costume's smile. I always kicked myself for not modifying the suit with a mini-fan rigged to a battery pack to keep me cool on the inside."

"I feel a story brewing," Schrödinger muttered, regretting his earlier interest. Curiosity killed the cat, indeed.

"Anyway, there was this little girl who was had just came from the cotton candy stand and she decided to come over to me," Marcie continued. "So I said to her, 'Hi, little girl!' in this dumb falsetto I'm supposed to use in-character. Well, Girly decided to let me know what she was eating by taking some of the cotton candy from her mouth and slapping it on my right bun."

"I take it you weren't happy," the cat reasoned.

"I said to her, 'Hey, kid, what's the matter with you? You know how much it costs to clean these suits?' But she just turned around and headed for her folks. That's okay, though. She didn't know it, but I secretly improved her looks by taking some of that cotton candy and putting it on her hair. Then, I got the heck outta there. Good times."

Marcie gave another casual look around. The skyline of the roller coaster and tilt-a-whirl, the real estate of smaller rides nestled between the bouroughs of striped game tents and food stands were taking her mind off of rough mornings and the strange mystery she found herself in.

Although she came and worked here for as long as she could recall, there was something about the _sounds_ of the place. She stopped walking, closed her eyes and just listened.

Schrödinger looked up in concern. "What's wrong?"

Marcie gave a deep, wistful smirk. "Nothing. Just feeling it again."

"What?"

"The sounds of the park. The chatter of the people. The sounds of the rides. Y'know, no two days ever sound the same here? It's always different, always exciting."

Then her small happiness was given the Scorched Earth treatment when realization set in. Her face suddenly fell into sad understanding.

It was moments like this that her father lived for when he came here. The crowds. The rides and entertainment. The satisfaction of the people. The fun.

Those moments, those simple, blessed moments fueled Winslow better than any drug devised. He was an entertainer. He knew it, and the park was his personal stage.

"This is his legacy," she said under her breath with melancholy. "No matter what I do with my life, this will always be a part of me. And I kept fighting him about that."

"Then perhaps a peace gesture would be appropriate," Schrödinger offered, breaking her chain of thought.

Marcie gave the cat an annoyed glance. "Eavesdropping is rude, y'know."

"My apologies, dear," said the cat. "I couldn't help it. Perfect hearing, perfect sense of smell...perfect everything, come to think about it. But that's beside the point. For whatever the reason for you fighting your father, a peace offering could smooth things over."

Marcie gave the notion some thought. It really _couldn't_ hurt, but what to do?

While she ruminated on it, she looked around the environs of the park. She had wandered deep into the establishment and recognized that she found herself near its geographical center.

Familiar. What was near here?

Marcie turned and saw a few yards away the park's large and sole tilt-a-whirl ride, now wrapped in warning security tape and defunct, as patrons walked by.

"That's it," Marcie announced to Schrödinger. "I told Dad this morning that I would check on one of his rides that broke down." She pointed to the motionless machine. "That's the one."

They sauntered over to the ride as non-chalantly as they could by milling with those people that were walking in its general direction.

When she stopped next to the tilt-a-whirl, Marcie gave a quick look for eyes watching her, and, when satisfied that none were present, slipped through the cocoon of tape and wiggled into the dark base of the ride with a succession of moves that almost impressed Schrödinger.

Deciding to play watchcat, Schrödinger asked, "What do you see?"

Marcie twisted under the heavy mechanisms and supports, flashing her penlight around its guts to find the offending problem.

"Nothing yet. Eleanor said that the problem was...a-hah! Found it. The speed governor."

The penlight shone on the clunky device, built to regulate the rate of speed for the ride, but under slow, careful inspection, Marcie could see the fresh break of a metal component.

"Metal fatigue," she surmised. Then, as she was about to twist out of there, her eye caught something different on the break and she shined the penlight on it. The surface of the break was smooth, clean. However, it didn't run across its entirety. On the other side of the break, its surface was heavily scored and grooved, as if...

"Cut!" Marcie found herself yelling to herself. _Sabotage_.

She wished that she had a camera to take a shot of this incriminating proof, but decided that it wasn't going anywhere as she squirmed her body out from under the several ton machine.

Eventually, Marcie extracted herself from the tape barrier, brushed herself off and caught her breath.

"What did you find?" Schrödinger asked. "You said 'cut'."

"I think my dad's ride's been sabotaged," Marcie explained grimly. "The speed governor was cut so it could break apart and wreck the ride when it was being used. By why? Who would do that?"

The cat cocked his head at her. "Well, it seems that you are a veritable mystery magnet, but perhaps you should focus on one mystery at a time. You have yet to solve the case of the-"

The rest of the sentence was cut by the sounds of panicked patrons scattering before the sight of the hulking creature stalking in the teen and cat's direction.

"Sea Beast?" Marcie added.

"Yes, thank you," said Schrödinger, trying to keep his cool.

And finding that he was failing.


	5. 5

_5~_

Marcie didn't just want to succumb to the panic and run like everyone else. She wanted to stand up to it, maybe even get a chance to reason with it, but visually it looked every bit the living, yet dangerous life-form people had said it was, and everything about its nature told her that she was better off observing it from a distance and giving it a respectfully wide berth.

She weaved around the tent-like concession stands, Schrödinger bounding by her heels. Close behind them, they could hear each stand collapse like semi-rigid cloth sacks under the slashing claws of the creature.

"I'm sensing a pattern here," Marcie muttered after cutting up a thoroughfare before it filled with a glut of terrified people. "Why is he always coming after us?"

"You could ask him once he stops for a rest," quipped the cat.

"I'm not waiting that long," Marcie said, looking back to gauge her distance from the Sea Beast. "I've gotta stop him or he'll wreck my dad's park."

"What do you suggest?"

The Sea Beast was fighting and frightening his way past an especially dense wall of people, which gave Marcie time to think and survey the breadth of the amusement park. Few of the concession stand still stood. One in particular caught her eye.

"I think I've got an idea," she said. Then she ran to the other side of the thoroughfare and headed back towards the stands.

"You're heading back towards him?" the cat asked her. "Suicide is _never_ an option."

"I don't think he saw us," Marcie said, entering the abandoned cotton candy stand. "Quick! Get in."

Marcie found the cotton candy machines and turned them on without preamble. She then found a dented bucket on the ground, grabbed it, and ran out of the tent.

"Where are you going now?" the cat asked.

"I need water!" She knew of one place that could supply her. "Make the candy, Schrödinger. And make it big!"

The cat gave a resigned sigh and dipped his paw into one of the machines. While the pink froth began thicken, he began working the edible filaments into a dense cloud of confectionary.

The Slippery Slope water slide that was installed a few weeks before and made considerable profit for the park was still operational even though nobody was around to operate it.

Zigzagging among the remaining stands and rides to keep under cover, Marcie soon sprinted over to the massive pool at the bottom of the ride and scooped the bucket into it. She then made a beeline back to the cotton candy stand, fighting against the weight of the bucket and hoping that the Sea Beast hadn't seen her. She also hoped that the cotton candy was of sufficient thickness by now.

Finally returning to the tent, Marcie gratefully saw that the cat had made the food grow into a reddish mass that began to recklessly fill the front of the stand.

"Great!" Marcie praised. "I can work with this. Keep making more."

As the cat worked with the bowl shaped machines, Marcie grabbed large heaps of the confectionary, laid it on the ground, and mixed it carefully with desperate handfuls of water, turning it into a pink, glue-like mass.

For several minutes, human and feline worked in the tent, until, finally, a thick carpet of tacky, spun sugar covered the floor of the stand, except for a strategically bare path that led from the front of the stand to one of the side windows.

"Okay, now we need to lure him here," Marcie told Schrödinger, eyeing him suddenly with tactical interest.

Something the cat noticed soon after. "You can't be serious!"

"You're way faster that I am," reasoned Marcie. "Just let him see you and lead him here. I'll do the rest."

Schrödinger saw the rash logic of the girl and shook his head mournfully. "Cats should be influencing human beings, not the other way around," he muttered as he jumped out of the tent's front window, then scampered out into the park's now chaotic grounds.

Following the faint scent of the ocean, the cat soon homed in on the creature's general location.

The Sea Beast had stopped in hesitation by a clearing, not sure where to proceed in finding for the girl and cat. It was now or never.

Giving his loudest yowl, Schrödinger had gotten the Beast's attention. It turned his head to the sound, saw the animal, and immediately gave lumbering chase.

Schrödinger was both relieved that the plan was working so far and terrified for the exact same reason, as he teasingly showed himself to the creature whenever he pulled away too far.

Eventually, he reached the periphery of the cotton candy stand and a waiting, grateful Marcie, who reached out her arms to catch the now leaping cat in her arms.

"Ooof! No more snacks for you before bedtime," the girl joked.

"Cute," Schrödinger muttered. "You better get ready. He's on his way."

And sure enough, the monster had lurched and stopped by the direction of the tent, a good few yards away. He had lost the cat but was now in the perfect position for the trap.

"Hey, shark bait!" Marcie called from the tent's front window. "We're over here!"

The Sea Beast heard the taunts coming from up ahead, saw Marcie and Schrödinger and charged towards them like a seaweed clad freight train.

While Schrödinger began to whimper in Marcie's arms, she took one last look at the clear path she stood on. It was a dance that she had to be precise and quick to execute.

The yards were closing swiftly. He had to almost on top of them for this to work.

The Beast gave a roar of triumph as he spread out his muscular arms and claws, eager to rend and feed.

With his head blasting into the front window, Marcie ducked to the side to avoid the oncoming bite and sidestepped along the path towards the waiting window.

Without thinking, she danced over to the other window and dove out of it, landing hard on her shoulder but rolling over to avoid crushing Schrödinger.

The creature, meanwhile, used his claws to tear the front window open wider to more easily enter the tent in that same move, but he was now a victim of his own momentum, as he stumbled against the tent's cloth and fell into the interior of the stand, crashing and sticking into the cotton candy glue that spread across the floor.

Marcie released the cat and stood ungainly, then gave a satisfied smile as she watched the vaunted Sea Beast twisting, thrashing and working his way deeper into the sticky sweet trap. It looked as if he were captured in a strange, pink tar pit.

Eventually, damage from the monster's violent attempts to get free caused the tent to collapse and settle on him while he continued to kick and claw.

"Stick around, chum," Marcie joked, then she gave a sigh and said, "Let's get out of here."

"And leave that thing here?" Schrödinger asked worryingly.

"Someone'll call the sheriff or animal control and deal with that thing," she reasoned as she headed in the direction of the parking lots. "Meantime, I have to analyze that stuff we found at the aquarium."

Schrödinger also gave a sigh. This was way more excitement than a cat should experience in a day, he thought as he followed her.

* * *

The park's office building offered advantageous views of the property and certainly allowed Winslow a sight of the proceedings below.

After calling the sheriff's office, he had chance to see a wonder.

His daughter, Marcie, had managed to capture this menace that disrupted his business, however long that lasted. The courage it took to do that spoke volumes to him about how she actually cared about the park, all things considered.

It also made him think on the breakfast they had. Maybe he had been too hard on her. He hadn't really listened to her side of the story, so angry and closed off was he, emotionally, from her.

The park was all to him. His inheritance, his legacy. He never wanted it to be passed down to no one but a Fleach, and even then, to immediate family.

With the damage to the tilt-a-whirl, the possible lawsuits from whoever was riding it at the time, and the threat of a definite lawsuit from Mr. Greenman if he didn't sell the park, Winslow could see how his mind would not be receptive to a daughter's pleas.

He wearily put his arm on the panoramic window and rested his forehead on the crook of that arm and sighed as he watched Marcie and some cat speed-walk over to the parking lots.

"What are you getting into, Marcie?" he had to ask aloud.

Soon, both daughter and cat were gone, and Winslow was alone with his work and his thoughts. Thoughts that now included his daughter.

"Marcie," he sighed.


	6. 6

Schrödinger sat on a stool in Marcie's laboratory, both admiring the girl's diligence and pleasantly daydreaming the irony of what he saw before him on Marcie's lab table.

Loops of curved tubes resembled colored, glass roller coasters as they moved bubbling liquid through them. Petri dishes, occupied with storing other samples and substances, sprawled out across the table in haphazard groups, reminding the cat of the surviving concession stands of the park, and a quietly humming centrifuge mixed solutions in a smooth spin that would have made her family's erstwhile tilt-a-whirl proud.

To him, it was easy for his imagination to just see Fleach's Folly Factory made in miniature using lab equipment, but in Marcie's mind, it was simply ordered chaos.

Marcie took an eyedropper of blue solution and introduced the liquid into a Petri dish that contained a cut section of the seaweed that she took from Ocean Land.

Upon contact, the plant began to bubble and sizzle as the chemical caused it to be broken down into a dark green liquid.

Drawing up a sample with a pipette, she released it onto a small, glass plate, which she then clipped under a microscope for her perusal, a series of hums of growing understanding.

Schrödinger glanced at the cd player in the corner with a sour eye. A ska slow jam was playing, one of a whole cd's worth of tracks, and the cat wondered if the bellows of the Sea Beast were, in fact, more melodic.

"Are you trying to hum to whatever that is coming from your cd player?" he moaned, quietly.

"It's ska," Marcie explained, not lifting her head. "It's nice and I'd like to finish listening to it."

"I thought you said that you still didn't want to go home just yet," Schrödinger reminded.

"Technically, my lab isn't my house," Marcie explained. "It's just on the property. Anything else?"

"Actually, yes. Have you come up with your analysis, yet?"

She didn't quite answer him, but instead, hummed some more. Then, she straightened her posture and went to the blackboard at the far end of the lab. She wrote across it, the word, _organic_ , then went to prepare the Petri dish containing the sticky substance from the vault.

"Organic," the cat read. "The seaweed is real, then?"

"Very much so," said Marcie. "And probably local. The creature might leave Ocean Land and head for the sea. But if that's the case, why would he return? Why not just escape?"

"I dare say it might have something to do with one of us," Schrödinger reasoned with a gulp. "I thought that it was only after me, but it may be hunting you, as well."

Marcie scoffed at the notion while she peered into her microscope. "I don't have anything he wants. How could I? If he's still after you, then I just keep being in the wrong place, next to you, at the wrong time, still next to you."

"You could always excuse yourself from my presence when the creature appears again," Schrödinger offered with sarcasm.

"Well, I would but I told you I'd help and I would," Marcie said, then straightened to what she saw in the lens. "Wait a minute...that's strange. I'm gonna pop it in the spectroscope."

The cat reared in disbelief. " _You_ have a spectroscope?"

"Hard to believe, huh?" Marcie asked sarcastically as she began feeding the sample into the analyzer's receiving bay. "It was a gift from a good friend of mine. A regular dumpster diver."

"Hmm, some of my best friends dove in dumpsters," Schrödinger mused.

The old machine hummed to life, heated the sample, and then printed its chemical composition across its elderly, green screen.

"Here we go," said Marcie, her curiosity rising as she read the face of the machine. "95.38% ethanol and 4.62% ethyl acetate. C20-H30-O2. Some other organic compounds and...SiO2. Well, that explains things."

The analytical breakdown made the cat's brain feel numb, but he needed to know the answer, just for satisfaction's sake. "What? What explains things?"

"Spirit gum," she said simply.

"Spirit gum?" Schrödinger echoed. "Who would put that on a wall?"

"Someone who wanted to stick something _on_ said wall, I would think," Marcie reasoned. "But what?"

There was a moment of thought that both silently engaged in, but before it had gotten any longer, Marcie stood up from her stool, announcing, "We have to get back to Ocean Land."

* * *

"Young lady," Doctor Redding said to Marcie from within his office, hardly hiding his annoyance. "I do not make it habit of escorting teenagers through restricted areas, and certainly not more than once."

"I understand that and I want to say that I appreciate what you did for me earlier," Marcie placated with hands raised diplomatically. "But I had to come back, sir. Turns out that I did miss something pretty big when we were at The Vault. You know how editors are."

"And this something is back at The Vault?" Redding asked, worried that if anything was there to threaten the samples that remained, he might be blamed for it. "Are you sure?"

"Positive," Marcie told him. "But time is crucial, so we gotta get there fast."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want the adhesive to dry out," the doctor managed to hear her say as she departed from the office's doorway with Schrodinger.

He was mentally thrown.

"The what?"

* * *

"Miss Freep, why did you need a tape measure from Maintenance?"

"The only thing of interest here is The Vault," Marcie explained while she stood on a low stool while leaning against the corner wall and placing the metal tipped end of the measure up to the side of the x-marked location. She could still feel the sticky residue of the spirit gum, so affixing it to the end was not too daunting. "Or rather, its keypad."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"Run your end up to the keypad and hold it there."

The doctor couldn't fathom what this strange wanted from this course of action but he mentally shrugged and did as he was told, uncoiling the measure from his hand as he walked to the security device.

When he reached it and placed the spool on the keypad, the tape began to sag in the middle of its length, prompting Marcie to call out from the corner, "Make it taut and lock it off."

The doctor did as told, pulling gently until the tape's length straightened and he pushed the button on the spool that locked the tape in place.

Marcie peered down the tape. The angle was perfect, it lined up with the keypad. But with its height on her end, it was very suspect. Whatever was stuck up there, wasn't meant to be noticed.

While she thought, Doctor Redding still wondered why he, an accredited doctor of biology was standing next to a vault with an oil covered tape measure in his skilled hand. He gave Marcie a terse, signaling cough to get her attention.

"Oh! Sorry, Professor-" Marcie started.

"That's _Doctor_ ," Redding corrected. "And how long am I to be holding this thing? I have work to do, young lady. _In my office_."

"Yes, Doctor. I forgot."

"And don't also forget, dearest," Schrödinger added, seeming to take slight pleasure in seeing her flustered momentarily. "You wanted to go home and find your tablet or cell phone or something to take pictures of that carnival ride of your father's."

Marcie looked down on the cat. "I won't. I should've _had_ a camera when I..." She stiffened in revelation.

"What?" asked Schrödinger.

With a smirk, Marcie answered. "A camera! That's what was stuck up here."

"That's ridiculous," the doctor scoffed. "To what end?"

"To record anyone using the keypad," Marcie said triumphantly. "If whoever planted this hidden camera managed to see the keycode sequence punched up, he'd know it now."

The logic of that stifled any future scoffing from the doctor. This needed prompt action. From him, of course.

"Then I'll get in touch with Security and tell them to change the keycode," he offered.

"Oh, that'll show him," Marcie snarked. "Change the locks _after_ he's gone through your place like a tornado."

With pink creeping along his face, Doctor Redding amended his earlier course of action.

"Right. Of course," he murmured, still holding the tape measure in his hand.

Schrödinger's ears and tail twitched in anticipation of a possible hunt, and he asked Marcie as she descended from the stool, "Well, what now?"

"Well, one thing's for sure," she said. "This caper looks way to sophisticated for something that grew in a test tube, apparently."

Before Doctor Redding could discern anymore of the conversation, the duo's backs were seen as they began to leave.

He did, however, manage to hear Marcie call from the hall she and the cat rushed into on the way out, saying, "Get that for me, would you?"

The flummoxed doctor still held the tape measure and its released span sprawled all over the floor.

* * *

The teen and the cat had an animated conversation as they descended down the curved staircase that separated the labs above from the visitors' level below.

"What did you mean by that?" Schrödinger asked as he trotted slightly ahead of Marcie. "That the caper was more sophisticated than the Sea Beast?"

"I mean that maybe there's more than one player involved in this mystery. A human being.

"A human? What, helping the creature?" he asked again.

"Or maybe the other way around," Marcie posited. "Maybe the Sea Beast was the perfect distraction. Scaring everybody away while the person made off with the canister."

"You're saying that a person somehow communicated successfully with that creature? To what end? And what does the Sea Beast gain from such a partnership?"

"Maybe a share of the take. Food," she guessed. "If there are a lot of eggs in that canister, then maybe he'd give a hefty portion of them to the Sea Beast and still have enough to sell to interested parties."

"Like who?"

"Rival scientists or maybe what you said earlier, criminal gourmands. The eggs are still pretty fresh," Marcie reasoned, then added wryly. "At least, until the canister's battery runs out."

Marcie started to notice that the cat was steps ahead of her on their way to ground floor. She was eager to solve this egg enigma, as well, but she wondered why the cat was practically running ahead when even she knew that she would had to stop and think before the next move. He would have to do the same.

"Hey, Schrödinger," she called from behind him. "Where's the fire? We don't even know where to go next or who this mystery person is. If he exists."

The cat stopped by the foot of the stairs and raised his head experimentally, then crooked it towards her. "That's not why I went ahead. I...I smell something. A scent I have not smell since..."

Marcie finally caught up with the feline and they both stood pensively in the aquarium's central gallery, a picturesque hub that allowed visitors to take different corridors that would lead them to different exhibits.

Although she knew that her sense of smell was laughable compared to his, she glanced around the gallery suspiciously, but didn't see anyone but the occasional janitor or maintenance worker walking by.

"What's the matter, now?" Marcie asked the cat, almost feeling foolish for being so reactionary to his olfactory alerts. "You smell fish around here? I hate to break it to you, but this _is_ an aquarium, after all."

Schrödinger hopped over to the center of the room and raised his head for another sniff. "No, if you must know. It's not fish," he explained in annoyance. "It's not briny or meaty...it's...it's _sweet_?"

"Sweet?"

"Yes." said the cat. "There!" He then swung himself in the direction of a set of grey doors set on the side of a corridor that warned visitors away with the word 'Basement.'

Marcie ran over to the doors with Schrödinger and experimentally turned one of the handles. Surprisingly, it opened.

The lower levels were a dank, sparsely-lit affair of cold, concrete walls, lined with thick, wide pipes that led through side accessways to huge water tanks and supply storage areas.

The two slipped by the doors and entered, descending, as quiet as possible, down a railed, utility ramp that the double doors opened up to.

They reached the bottom of the ramp and crept slowly along the basement's spacious path, Marcie following Schrödinger as he followed the scent he was locked on to.

Neither spoke as they silently stalked further up the way, passing two offices, one on either side of the cellar, and a row of unassuming lockers set along one wall.

A faint sound ahead in the dim light gave them pause. They stopped just short of an indistinct figure wielding what looked like a staff, stabbing it in a downward angle to the floor.

"Up ahead," the cat whispered before bolting ahead of Marcie.

"Wait!" the girl cautioned as she jogged behind him.

Under one of the weak, fluorescent light fixtures, the duo could finally make out a stern-faced woman wearing a business suit. In her hands was a broom that she was using with unwieldy annoyance on the floor by her tailored shoes.

Schrödinger's head pointed low and he breathed out, incredulously, "I knew it."

Marcie followed the cat's gaze and couldn't believe the luck, as dark as it was.

"No way," she muttered.

Coating both the woman's shoes and the head of the broom were incriminating wads of carnival-grade cotton candy.


	7. 7

_7~_

Any thoughts of introducing herself to the woman died quickly at the sight of the confection.

Hungry for leads, Marcie's mind reacted, jumping to any and all connections and conclusions.

"How did that cotton candy get on your shoes?" Marcie blurted out. "That came from my father's amusement park."

"Unfortunately, I stepped in it," the woman said, curtly. "As the janitorial supervisor, I run a clean, tight ship around here, and the last thing I expect to find is this...gunk and trash cluttering up my hallways."

Marcie, finally cognizant of her runaway emotions, glanced down to calm herself and think of another question, and upon doing so, she spotted a folded piece of paper sticking out of the wad on the floor. She kneeled down and picked it up. When she opened it, confusion colored her expression.

On its face was a maze, a network of connecting paths that look like a enlarged picture of a antique integrated circuit.

"Do you know what this is?" Marcie asked her while she held the paper up to the woman's perusal.

The supervisor peered at it, thought for a moment and answered, "It looks like a diagram or floor plan or something."

"Do you know where it came from?" Marcie continued.

"No," the supervisor told her. Then, she suddenly began to puff up with slight vexation. "Now, I don't know why it was on the floor, but I can assure you, I didn't track it through here. Now, you'll have to leave. This is a restricted area and you're trespassing."

Marcie ran into enough people, like Doctor Redding, recently, to know when to bow out gracefully, and so, with a bow, she and Schrödinger began to back away from the still preening woman.

"Sorry to bother you, ma'am," Marcie said as she departed. "We'll be going, now."

Marcie folded the paper and tucked it into her jacket as the two walked back towards the ramp.

They were halfway up it when the double doors swung open revealing a man pushing a cart of cleaning equipment. A man who became more recognizable as he closed the distance between them.

"Hey, old timer," Marcie greeted Alphonse when she saw his face.

Alphonse stopped next to the girl and cat and gave a nod. "Hey, you two. Were you talkin' to the boss lady down there? Oh, don't get on her bad side. I've seen her fire younger and better janitors than me for less."

"Yes, we were just admiring her footwear," purred Schrödinger. "Carnival chic."

Confusion deepened the lines on his face. "Huh?"

"We ran into the Sea Beast in, of all places, my dad's amusement park," Marcie explained to him. "We trapped it in cotton candy and got away, and now we saw that same cotton candy on your supervisor's shoes. Hmm, I might have to rethink my list of suspects, here."

"Suspects?" asked the janitor, perking up with interest. Then, he asked in a whisper, "You looking for someone?"

"Marcie has it in her mind that perhaps this Sea Beast is actually working with a partner," said the cat with an incredulous sigh.

"You mean a...person?"

"Possibly," said Marcie, confidently. "It's just a working theory, at the moment, but I have to entertain all possibilities."

Alphonse suddenly leaned close to Marcie's face, while his eyes darted around, looking around for eavesdroppers. "Well, I don't know about the boss lady, and you didn't hear it from me, but I heard that those eggheads upstairs have been workin' on some kinda thingamajig...that can talk to fish."

"Oh, you mean Professor Angstrom's Marine Communicator? I've read about that. It's old news, though." Marcie chuckled. Then a thunderbolt of thought struck her and suddenly her theory didn't sound so farfetched after all. "Whoa! Of course! Why didn't I see that? The partner could've used _that_ to talk to the creature."

"Whole lotta trouble, if you ask me," the man grumbled under his breath. "Fish were meant to be caught, not chatted with."

The teen ignore the comment and began to speed-walk past the janitor with an inspired gleam in her eye. This case was now closer than ever to being solved, she thought.

"Thank you, sir. You've been very helpful," she called behind her before she and the feline left through the double doors.

"It's just Alphonse!" the man called back amiably. "Alphonse!" He shook his head with a small smile and said to himself. "These kids today. Always runnin'."

Gathered near the foot of the winding staircase back in the center hub of the visitor's area, Marcie and Schrödinger stopped to put their heads together before making their next move. A move that, upon reflection, gave the girl some pause.

"Great," Marcie sighed. "We might have to go back to Doctor Redding just to ask him about the communicator."

"He won't be too keen to see us again, but what's the worst that he could do to us?" Schrödinger asked innocently.

Marcie took a look up at the stairs and wondered for a moment about that question posed by a cat who never had anybody tell him to never ask a question like that.

* * *

"Y'know, the only reason you caught me is because there was a patrol car cruising nearby when Doctor Redding called you guys," Marcie said aloud as she reclined on the bench in the holding cell in Sheriff Stone's office. Then, in a parody of all the criminals that she helped to catch, she growled, "I could've gotten away if hadn't been for you competent cops."

"Joke all you want, you recidivist," Stone muttered, unlocking the cell door. "You can go now. It's getting dark and this isn't a bed and breakfast."

"I'm only a recidivist because you keep locking me up," she countered as she and Schrödinger walked out.

"No. I keep locking you up because I'll always be there to stop you from tap-dancing all over the toes of justice."

"Yes, sir. I'll just moon-walk all over them from now on," the teen quipped.

"Just take your sassy mouth and that cat outta here!" the sheriff huffed. Then, with a sigh, he asked, "Why can't you be like Fred, Daphne, those two other kids and that dog of theirs who all left under mysterious circumstances? They were good kids who knew who was in charge of this town's safety. Now, I get stuck with you."

The sheriff's words unexpectedly held Marcie like a vice for a moment. _'Yeah. Mysterious circumstances...'_ she thought. _'Maybe I should've asked V why she left. Was I afraid to?'_

She mentally shook the worry from her and focused on leaving the station. She looked down on the feline. "C'mon, Schrödinger. Let's beat it before he bores us with another telling of Dead Justice again."

That little jibe brought out the fanboy in the sheriff. "Dead Justice is not boring!" he yelled at their backs. "He's an inspiration to young and old alike!"

* * *

The sun's dying light painted the neighborhood in a soothing glow of gold while Marcie appreciated her freedom by breathing in the cooling evening air and leaning against her VW, which was parked outside the police station.

Schrödinger sat on the ground, preening himself, but having time to ask, "What do we do now?"

"Lounging in Chez Stone gave me time to think," she said. "Professor Angstrom's Communicator isn't stolen, so the only ones with access to it are Ocean Land's scientists. Ergo, if my theory about the Sea Beast having some sort of partner is correct, then this has to be an inside job. And since I noticed that Doctor Redding made sure that he got rid of us by calling the *police, and not security to escort us out, he just became my next suspect."

"And how are you going to prove or disprove that the good doctor is the partner?"

"I don't know," Marcie shrugged.

Schrödinger growled in annoyance. "You keep saying that. Say something different."

"Okay. Because of the cotton candy we found in the basement, it's a good bet that the Sea Beast freed himself and came back. And thanks to the paper I found _in_ that cotton candy, I can guess that Redding may have something to do with it. Is that better?"

"I suppose," he sulked, slightly.

"Good, because we're going back there and catch him," Marcie said simply as she got into her car.

The cat hoped that, with his impeccable hearing, he misheard her. "What? Who? Redding...or the Sea Beast?"

"Doesn't matter."

"It doesn't matter? _It doesn't matter_?" Schrödinger sputtered as he jumped with reluctance into the passenger seat. "You-You've been in that lock-up too long. You're lucky Redding doesn't sue you."

"No, think about it. I think Redding is hiding something. He's the lead scientist in Ocean Land. He'd have the most access to the communicator. If he's the partner, then why is he still working there? If I found a buyer, I'd call out sick and leave town with all of the cash," Marcie reasoned as she pulled out into the street. "And what about the cotton candy in the basement? You saw it. Same as me. It's obvious that the Sea Beast came back. Why? Because they're still talking to each other. The only question is why. If they have the canister, why stick around?"

"Tenure?" the cat joked nervously.

"C'mon, 'fraidy cat," Marcie said, confidently merging into the early evening traffic. "I have to whip something up in my lab and then we'll bag a beast or a bad guy."


	8. 8

_8~_

Marcie didn't want to admit it openly, but she was glad that her father was still at work when she left her bedroom with her cell phone in her jacket pocket. She needed its camera and wasn't too eager to hash it out with Winslow over whatever perceived or imagined slight he believed she had done to him.

Getting some snap shots of the tilt-a-whirl's sabotaged speed governor when all was said and done with the case was paramount. That might go a long way to placating or even pleasing him, somehow.

Leaving the house, Marcie went into the backyard and made a beeline to her laboratory.

Schrödinger, lounging on the lab's counter that dominated the room, stood lazy watch over the unfolded paper that Marcie had took from the aquarium earlier.

With a half-consumed glass of water Marcie had been nursing keeping him company, he lifted his head upon hearing her enter, pass him, and then open a top drawer from the counter. From there, she presented a tray on the black countertop that the cat could see displayed four syringe bulbs.

"What's that?" he asked.

"These are my newest invention," Marcie said, with a noticeable touch of pride in her voice. "Quick Keys."

"They don't look like keys to me," Schrödinger observed, dryly.

"The Quick Keys are inside," Marcie sighed. "I created a chemical that will harden in contact with air. Sorta like liquid cement. I squirt some of that into a lock, it'll harden into the perfect shape of a key that fits that lock. All I have to do then is draw enough of the chemical out of the bulb to make a turning handle, and voila, instant access."

Schrödinger gave the pantomime of a thought, then quipped, "It still doesn't look like keys to me."

Marcie ignored him and went back into the drawer. This time, she presented something that look like a small jewelry box.

"And what's in that?" the cat asked while preening himself. "A diamond ring?"

"I wish," Marcie muttered as she slowly opened the container, revealing a tiny sphere. "This is a knockout capsule. And before you ask, I can only make one, and that's if I'm lucky."

"I wasn't going to ask, but why?"

Marcie carefully closed the box and placed it on the countertop. "Because the chemicals used to make it are really hard to come by. They're expensive and I can't synthesize them. I'm lucky I had the materials needed to make my prototype Quick Keys."

Schrödinger's ears pricked in surprise. "So, those things are untested, then?"

"After tonight, they won't be. I'll be using them to get us back into Ocean Land." Hearing herself say that, along with the anticipation of a nighttime action that could possibly go wrong, secretly thrilled her. "The knockout capsule is for Big, Green and Ugly, though. I only get one shot at this. Hopefully, it'll be enough."

The cat whipped his tail back forth in response. "Well, I have complete confidence in your chemistry skills," Schrödinger said with what Marcie thought was a touch of sarcasm lacing his voice.

"Thanks," she said, raising her head from handling her prototypes skeleton keys in time to watch as Schrödinger's tail whipped too hard and knocked her glass over, spilling water across one side of her paper clue.

"Hey, watch it! Ugh, look what you did!" she scolded him as she rushed over and picked the sheet up from the puddle. "I was already having trouble trying to read what was on it because the printing's so old.

"Terribly sorry. I guess I was too excited about tonight."

"I don't see how," Marcie said, shaking the excess water from the clue and lying it back on the countertop. "You're essentially along for the ride. If I'm caught, at least security won't think twice about you. You're a cat."

"Yes, I do have that advantage," Schrödinger purred. He gave the paper a casual glance and then saw something being brought out from the water. "Marcie! Look! The paper!"

Marcie gazed over the wet side of the paper and eventually, she, too, could finally make out a word...and a number.

"Floor 1?" she read.

"Floor 1?" the cat echoed in puzzlement.

"Sound like something to do with the aquarium's layout, I suppose," Marcie surmised. She then walked back to her tray and small box and pocketed two of the bulb syringes and the knockout capsule into her wool jacket.

With a determined and anxious gleam in her eyes, Marcie told the cat, "Okay. Let's go."

* * *

Marcie hunched in front of Ocean Land's main entrance double doors, taking out one of the bulb syringes from her pocket.

Her heart was pounding. She could hear it in her ears, just as she fought to ignore or rationalize against the voice that nagged in the back of her mind that was telling her to turn away from this course of action.

 _'What would your father think if he knew you were gallivanting about town at night?'_ the voice vexed her.

Considering the tiff they had that morning and the distance their respective actions had created, Marcie countered that what Mr. Winslow Fleach didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

She fought to keep her hand from trembling as she placed the narrow opening of the syringe against the keyhole and gave it a steady squeeze.

The thick chemical ooze flowed into the spaces of the lock mechanism, becoming firmer and stiffer with each second that passed. True to form, the liquid soon hardened into the specific shape of the lock's tumblers that a true key would have fit into.

With a grin that would have made the Cheshire Cat jealous, Marcie pulled the bulb away from the keyhole slowly, drawing out a thick, straight strand of chemical, like liquid silk from a spider's spinneret. The strand petrified in the night air and with a firm snap from the end of the syringe, it became a working handle to carefully turn the keyhole open.

Marcie gripped the makeshift handle between thumb and forefinger and slowly twisted. The lock on the double doors gave way to her genius and that night, the Quick Key became a new tool in her arsenal.

"Hmm, don't get too cocky," Schrödinger muttered.

Marcie ignored Schrödinger's skepticism as she and he slipped quietly into the forward gallery of the visitor's area where they first met so many hours ago.

Now it was dark and deserted, lit dimly by the surrounding aquariums' atmospheric lightning. Fish still swam in its confines, but in the gloom, they gave a hypnotic, surreal effect that threatened to hold the girl and cat spellbound.

Forcing themselves to focus on the matter at hand, they crept past the archway that opened up toward the central hub, led by Marcie's penlight. The hub gave the appearance of a quiet, shade-filled gallery in a gothic house with the circular staircase promising terrors to any who dared to ascend.

Marcie took a tentative step and forced herself not to think as she took another step, and then another, slowly climbing higher towards, she hoped, Doctor Redding and his abuse of Professor Arthur Angstrom's crowning technological achievement.

"Do you even know where Doctor Redding is?" Schrödinger asked from behind her, silently bringing up the rear.

Marcie stopped in mid-ascent to consider that question. The answer to it made her uncomfortably foolish.

"Uh, I didn't think that far," she confessed. "But he might in his office, if he's still here."

"You better hope so. Otherwise, we'll, or rather, you'll be in trouble for breaking and entering."

That warranted an annoyed glance from Marcie. "Hey, I never said I was a professional at this. I'm learning as I go. Now, c'mon."

Marcie was spared anymore of the cat's bellyaching when they finally made it to the top of the stairs and entered the wide, curving main corridor that housed the offices, storage rooms and laboratories along with the aquarium's windowed tower that extended from the main building that the resident scientists were privy to.

With no sign of security patrolling in their area, as of yet, Marcie breathed relievedly and flashed her penlight across every door that she approached, until her light revealed the office of Doctor Morris Redding.

"Found it," she whispered.

Her elation grew all the more when she looked down and saw what she had hoped to see. A light glowing from under the door. He was there and probably in the middle of wrongdoing.

"Gotcha."

She twisted the doorknob, stepped into the office with authority...and saw the wholly unexpected.

The doctor was sitting behind his desk, which wasn't at all surprising if he were working, but he sat frozen in terror before the snarling visage of the Sea Beast, who was clawing the air by his fear-stricken face with promises of striping it from his skull.

"What is _he_ doing here?" Schrödinger blurted out.

"I-I heard a noise in The Vault room," Redding sputtered, wide-eyed. "I went in and found the Sea Beast standing by one of the air grates. I ran back to my office to call security, but it caught up with me and yanked the phone cord from the wall."

"You mean you're not it's partner in crime?" The fact that Marcie, an admitted amateur, found herself making such a devastating mistake made her feel like a computer that was crippled by a serious error. "You're not using Professor Angstrom's communicator?"

Redding was almost struck speechless by the accusation. "Are you crazy?!" the doctor managed to scream, despite his fear. " _It's trying to kill me!_ "

The Sea Beast decided to ignore all of this human babbling and, with a snarl, shifted his bulk to focus its deadly attentions on Marcie and the cat.

Schrödinger instinctively knew that a creature that size was not to be trifled with, no matter how clever the feline thought he was. So, he fearfully backed up, hoping to exit the room without turning his back to a predator.

Unfortunately, he backed into the door, which was half opened when Marcie stepped in, closing it.

The sound of the door closing and the sight of the Sea Beast moving in on the two of them caused Schrödinger to run and hide behind Marcie for safety.

Marcie, for her part, backed away from the approaching creature, but didn't notice the cat cowering by her feet, causing her to stumble and fall onto her posterior hard.

"Isn't this how we met?" she asked in vexation as the cat extricated himself from her tangled legs.

Schrödinger ignored her words, so intent was he upon watching the Sea Beast stalk them. In his panic, he instead dove inside Marcie's jacket, letting his paws dig into every inner pocket in an anguished bid to find one thing that he was certain would save his life.

"Schrödinger!" she cried out, trying to pull the frantic cat from her jacket. "What-What are you doing? Get outta there!"

"The knockout capsule! We have to use it! Where is it?" he asked in a fear-broken voice. Then, he found it. "There it is!"

"Wait! It's an enclosed-" Marcie warned, but it was too late.

The cat reared up on his hind legs and blindly threw the pellet. It broke against the bottom of Doctor Redding's desk, releasing it pressurized contents and filling the room immediately.

If Marcie wasn't so quickly overtaken by the chemical assault on her consciousness, she would have marveled at the speed and effectiveness of her concoction.

However, as she and everyone else succumb to the capsule, she had time to wonder why the Sea Beast was seemingly immune as he closed in on her.

* * *

It was the pangs of a headache that woke Marcie from her chemically induced slumber. She opened her eyes and could more clearly feel the tight onset of pain in her temples.

"Wow, what a kick," she muttered. "I'll have to recalculate the strength of the gas when I get back to the lab."

"Who are you talking to?" asked an already awake and distraught Doctor Redding.

Marcie noticed that she was in some form of motion, a subtle rocking. She sat up and soon gathered that she and Redding were in a small raft that floated in the center of a large tank.

"Uh, no one," she answered him. "Where are we?"

"One of our shark tanks," Redding answered back. "I don't know why, but that beast must have put us on this raft and set us adrift here. But that's alright. As long as we don't capsize, we'll be fine."

"Uh, you said shark tank," Marcie reminded him with a gulp. "What kind of sharks are with us?"

"Carcharhinus leucas. Bull Sharks. Two of them, but suffice it to say, if we sit quietly we'll be safe." Redding said, trying not panic the girl or himself, for that matter.

The echoing sound of someone climbing up the ladder that hung from the side of the tank made the two turn to it. It wasn't who they expected.

The hulking mass of the Sea Beast cleared the top rung and shambled over towards the railed, low-lying platform that extended over the rim of the tank.

Used primarily for feedings, extractions and insertions of marine animals, the metal platform creaked from the creature's weight, and, to Marcie and the doctor's puzzled looks, the creature stuck a very strange image when it reached behind itself and produced a fishing rod.

"Okay, that's different," Marcie said to herself.

"What's he doing with that pole?" the doctor asked.

"Some serious game fishing, it looks like," she quipped.

The monster's wide, frog-like visage gave what looked to an approximation of a smile as it raised the rod in its clawed, webbed hand like a coachman's whip and gave it a surprisingly accurate and sharp cast.

Terrified, the girl and man could see the fish hook glitter under the work lights over the tank as it soared over to their direction. They both scrambled to the farthest side of the raft, desperate to avoid the hook's bite when it landed.

The raft rocked violently and threatened to tip over from the sudden shift in weight, but at the moment, neither cared.

Marcie's hands tried to find more purchase against the raft's rubber interior, which was now slick with water, and in her panic, she didn't feel the hook land lightly against her shin, which was exposed by her slouching knee-high sock.

With a cruel flick of the wrist, showing a deftness that belied the natural awkwardness of the beast, it whipped the rod back and reeled in the line.

As the line slid back along the raft, the hook twisted and its barb found the water-softened skin of Marcie's shin, scraping a red furrow across it.

The pain of the cut exploded through her, and her wail distracted Redding enough that neither saw the hook then claw into the other side of the raft and rip a terrible gash out of it.

Redding quickly yanked out a handkerchief from his suit jacket pocket and tied it around Marcie's thin leg, the white fabric turning a slowly spreading crimson.

"Are you alright, my dear?" Redding asked, worryingly. "Did it go into your leg?"

"No," she said through her teeth. "It just cut me."

"Unfortunately, that hook tore a hole in the raft," Redding reported. "We're sinking!"

Marcie gritted her teeth and saw through the throbbing pain to witness the Sea Beast shuffle off the platform and slowly climb back down from the side of the tank.

"Probably his idea," she growled.

"That's not the worst of it," the doctor added, glumly. "Because you're bleeding, when you enter the water, you'll attract the sharks to us."

Marcie grimly thought of that, as well. And then another thought hit her. The wound on her leg was tended by a man she was quick to suspect and slow to understand, in spite of his gruffness.

Now, they were both in the center of a watery death trap, made all the more deadly because her legs, which were now treading water over a sunk raft, was now ringing the dinner bell for the residents of the tank.

"I'm sorry I suspected you, Doctor Redding," Marcie morosely said, before kicking off and swimming towards the opposite end of the tank.

"What are you doing, girl? Get back here!" the doctor yelled from the distance, torn between safely swimming to the platform or joining Marcie.

"No sense in both of us getting eaten! You've got a chance! Get to the platform and call the police!" Marcie managed to call out from between breaths. "I'll lead them away!"

Her heart pounded as she forced herself to ignore her fear and the man's desperate protests. And part of that impetus that propelled her was the effort to not have the doctor's death on her conscience, even as her own was, at the moment, pending

Marcie got as far as the wall before fatigue overtook her and she had to slowly tread water again with her burning leg.

To keep her mind off of the impending shark attack, she remembered what she told Schrödinger about how dangerous not getting all the facts could be. Now, she was learning that lesson firsthand as the first of a pair of dorsal fins gently cut through the water in her general direction.

 _'Probably checking me out,'_ she thought, fearfully.

An assumption that was sadly proven correct when the dorsal fins submerged.

A nervous Marcie had just enough time to say, "Uh-oh," to herself before she suddenly felt an awesome force yank her by her loose sock with ridiculous ease into the warm depths of the tank.

Redding, managing to dog-paddle over to the edge of the low hung platform, turned his head in time to see the teen swiftly go under.

Terrified, he screamed her fictitious name, helpless to do anything except try to escape before the predators rounded on him.

His stomach was knotted and cold from fear as he tried to chin-up onto the edge of the platform. A chill soon danced across his body and he figured it was the air coming in contact with his soaked clothes.

But then, that chill grew deeper and more pronounced and his spine spasmed in panic when he suddenly felt something hit the side of his waist.

In horror, Redding clambered up to the platform in a fit of haphazard splashes, trying to get away from the shark that he assumed had found him.

Breathing hard and wheezing, it wasn't until he settled on the platform and scanned the surface of the water, that he discovered what all of the commotion was.

The surface of the water was choked white with ice floes, either already floating or ascending from the depths. No where could he see dorsal fins and he was dumbstruck as to why ice suddenly appeared in the tank.

Then, as if a miracle had manifested before his eyes, the doctor could see Marcie awkwardly breach the surface and slowly climb onto one of the flat ice floes. She then rested on her back in utter exhaustion.

"Margo!" Redding cried out. "Are you alright?"

Marcie wearily gave him a shaky thumbs-up. She waited for a few minutes before she finally, slowly, picked herself up and began carefully hopping from one floe to the other while giving Redding the benefit of an explanation.

"I'm fine," Marcie called out, weakly.

"Why is there ice all over the tank?" Redding asked.

"My Insta-Ice capsules," she told him after catching a breath on a closer floe. "I had to use them all up to get this trick to work. The water in the tank was warm. That told me that our guests like it that way, so I hoped that the ice would cool the water enough to confuse the sharks. Luckily, it worked."

She finally alighted on the last floe that was closest to the platform and was helped upon it by Redding's gratefully outstretched hand.

Now that they were safe from the animals, his professional side began to emerge. "Where are the sharks now?" asked the doctor. For Marcie and himself, self-defense was totally acceptable, but he didn't want them hurt if they could help it.

"Don't worry." Marcie consoled him. "They dove to the warmer water below. The ice should keep them honest until it melts. Oh, and my real name is really Marcie."

"Very well, _Marcie_. Now, let's get out of here," Redding said as they headed towards the ladder.

Once they made it to the floor below, Marcie stopped Redding with a gentle hand on his arm.

"Like I said earlier, I'm sorry for pulling you into this. If I wasn't so eager to solve this case by making you a suspect, you'd be home by now," she apologized again.

For the first time since seeing him, Marcie saw the doctor smile.

"No. I'd be finished by the Sea Beast. It's alright, though, as long as we learn from our mistakes," he told her, warmly, thankful that they both managed to cheat death that night.

Marcie was content to just stay in this moment of forgiveness and inner understanding, even if she and the doctor looked drowned rats, but a troubling thought intruded it.

"Oh, wow. I hope it didn't get ruined," she fretted.

"What?"

"This." She carefully reached into her drenched jacket pocket, took the folded piece of paper out and gingerly opened it up.

Although she could see faded words printed on its face, she still couldn't make them out, as she couldn't earlier in her lab, until Schrödinger spilled water on it and the word, 'Floor 1,' appeared.

Now that the whole thing was wet, she could actually make out more writing on its face. The words, 'Floor 1, Floor 2, Floor 3 and Vent-,' was written in descending order down the side of the diagram.

"Floors...Vent..." Then it hit her, even as it seemed such a strange thing for a monster to have lost in the cotton candy he tracked in the basement. "Of course! I wonder..."

Marcie turned to Redding. "C'mon, Doctor."

"Where are we going?" he asked, following her out of the tank room.

"We need to find a photo of Ocean Land and Schrödinger!"


	9. 9

_9~_

"If Ocean Land wasn't dealing with all of this Sea Beast nonsense, we would have been welcoming a new addition here, on loan from that aquatic park, Bubbleland. Their administrator, Chief Winchley says that he has a pink octopus that can actually talk and is intelligent enough to play music."

Marcie's scientific curiosity caused her to pause momentarily when they reached the foot of the curved stairs.

"That actually sound interesting. In fact, considering who I met today, I'm beginning to think that the number of animals that can talk might actually be growing. However, I have a case to solve and a talking cat of my own to find," Marcie reminded him.

Oh, sorry. I have seen some photos of the place here in the hub."

Marcie shook her head slightly. She had been before and hadn't even noticed the tastefully framed portraits of the aquarium that hung on the curved walls. They just didn't seem that important back then. Now, they were possibly critical to solving this case, but she decided to take it slow and weigh her actions more.

"Solving cases is a marathon, not a sprint," Marcie said to herself while she shined her penlight upon picture after picture, looking for one that was the right size. Then, she found it.

"I think I found one," she told Redding, who approached her.

He wasn't sure what her plan was, but, with the dread knowledge that the Sea Beast was real and a true threat, Redding was game to help Marcie with whatever she needed to end this monster's menace.

"Hold this," Marcie told Redding, passing the penlight to him. "Shine it on the picture."

With the portrait of Ocean Land's facade in full view, she placed the wet paper across its face. It covered over the building until they could see the building vaguely through the paper.

"There it is," she said in quiet triumph.

The diagram's network of paths superimposed neatly over Ocean Land's image, with the words 'Floors 1, 2, and 3' lining neatly off to the side.

"What is that?" Redding asked. "Some sort of map?"

"In a matter of speaking. Yes. You said that you ran into the Sea Beast and that he was standing next to an air grate. A _ventilation_ grate, in other words," Marcie postulated as she pointed to the paper. "That what this is. A diagram of the building's ventilation system and the floors that it goes through. I think I know why this is so important."

"Why?" the doctor asked in rapt attention. Something Marcie noticed.

"I'll tell you a little later, if I'm right," she said with a slight smirk of confidence rising from the side of her face. "I have to look for Schrödinger, my cat..."

Marcie caught herself saying those words and froze a little inside. _Her cat_? She shook her head and chalked up her faux pas to her mouth running on unthinking, emotional auto-pilot. He was a pain at times, but she didn't want the Sea Beast to harm him.

"I mean...the cat who was with me," she amended, grateful that the aquarium's hub was dark enough to hide her blush. "I need you to call Sheriff Stone. He's not much of a sheriff, but we might need the muscle."

Redding wholehearted agreed with her on that assessment. "Right. I'm going," he told her as he headed back upstairs to find a working phone from another office.

When he was gone, Marcie took a breath and spoke to herself. "Well, if I were a Sea Beast, there's only one place I'd be in a dark place like this."

She turned and followed the walls and other archways until she returned the one opened that led to the corridor that sported the double doors of the building's basement.

* * *

When Schrödinger was unconscious, he could swear that he was flying in the silent darkness, that he was blissfully moving through the ethereal space of the feline mind.

He opened his yellow eyes to take in the gloom of wherever he was and as his brain began to reboot, he noticed that he was still flying through the damp, dank air.

It wasn't until he tried to take a deep breath to clear his thoughts that he figured something was amiss.

His ribs, he found, were having a hard time expanding fully because he was being held aloft tightly by two large, webbed hands, or an approximation of them, that was carrying him through what he recognize as the basement.

"You know, this where we first met," said the cat for conversation's sake. "I smelled fish from the rear loading area. I snuck in, not knowing that the loading area led here. That's when I saw you. Small world, hmm?"

His captor said nothing in response.

"Listen," he continued, already starting to wonder why he was trying to reason with a freak of nature. "I know you probably can't understand me, but why have you been so eager to capture me or Marcie?"

"No," the Sea Beast growled. "Just you."

Schrödinger mouth hung open in utter disbelief. Now he knew how people reacted when _he_ spoke.

"You...You can talk!" the cat gasped, too shocked to see the personal irony of it all. "W-When? How?"

All the creature did, when it wasn't looking up at the ventilation ducts that hung from the ceiling, was give a laugh, a derisive, gurgling kind of laugh, at Schrödinger's incredulity.

Schrödinger began to wonder, with some trepidation, what the monster would do to him now, but before he could fret any further, they stopped.

"Yes, I can talk, and I already know that you can," it snarled at the cat. "That means that you are smart."

Schrödinger dipped his head humbly. "Well, I am flattered that you would think-"

"Silence," it commanded as it knowingly looked up and Schrödinger quietly followed its gaze. He looked to see an opened ventilation grate along the ductwork's length. Then, he felt the monster lift him up to the mouth of the grate and simply stuffed him in it.

"What on earth is going on here?" Schrödinger fumed

"You will go into the vents. I have located the canister somewhere in this ducting. You will find and retrieve the canister...or die."

"I suppose I haven't much choice in the matter," the cat gulped.

"No...you don't. Now, go."

Schrödinger wished Marcie was there. She seemed recklessly driven and somewhat sad around him, but she was smart, resourceful and strangely caring when she wanted to be, as well. The odd scratch behind the ear whenever she was in deep thought about something was something to actually...cherish.

Musings like those kept a dour Schrödinger grounded from the chimera's threats as he sighed and resigned himself to doing what he was told. He silently slunk into the dark of the ducts.

The Sea Beast afforded itself a gurgling snicker after Schrödinger disappeared. So pleased was it with present developments, it failed to notice Marcie standing boldly just a few yards away.

"No wonder you came back, you big mouthed bass," she said, loud enough to startle the creature. "The canister is still in the building."

The creature recovered, turned, and bared its fangs and claws to her. Marcie, however, stood her ground.

The Sea Beast hesitated and thought about Marcie's actions. Firstly, she was alive, which made him have to rethink whatever actions it was going to take.

Second, she didn't look intimidated, something he tested by bellowing a bellicose warning in her direction. Marcie didn't even flinch, shrugging her thin shoulders and staring _him_ down.

"Are you gonna quit pretending that you can't talk, or are you gonna keep wasting my time, you puffer fish," she challenged it.

"Very well," it finally replied to her. "You will hear me laugh in your face before I kill you." And with that, he launched after her.

Marcie turned on her heel and dashed down the basement's murk, heading back towards the ramp and possible safety, as long as she maintained her lead on it, which seemed assured, as the awkwardly moving monster, though powerful, wasn't much a sprinter.

The teen made a mental note of counting what she considered landmarks of the place, a water pipe bent to go down a service corridor, here, a directional marker stenciled along a damp wall, there. It wouldn't be long, now.

Marcie didn't want to turn her head for fear of missing a landmark or slowing down upon seeing the Sea Beast's approach. So, she gauged its distance from the animalistic racket it was making by listening to it bounce off the walls. From what she could estimate, it was still a safe several yards from her.

Then, she saw it. The janitors' lockers, and beyond that, the offices of Maintenance and the janitorial supervisor across from it. Beyond _that_ lie the ramp and freedom.

A freedom that was suddenly snatched from Marcie with a cruel trip of her feet, causing her to crash to the concrete floor.

She rolled a couple of feet and then stopped mercifully. She looked back to see how close the creature was gaining. It was dangerously close. Close enough to hear the laugh that it promised Marcie. Too close.

It saw her on the ground and roared in feral triumph, spreading claws that could rend walls, acrylic faces on fish tanks, and amusement park concession stands eagerly. Combined with its inordinate strength, it would make quick and bloody work of a prone Marcie.

With its shadow blanketing her, Marcie decide that now was the time to act. She rolled to avoid a clawed foot, hopped over a near-invisible line that stretched across the hall and ran up the side of one wall, and then reached out to pluck that line.

It took seconds for the trap to be released. A lattice made of disassembled fishing poles hung from the ceiling, until the trip line was disturbed, then the lattice dropped about a foot and stopped hard enough for it to shake loose individual lengths of fishing line armed with hooks of various types.

With the Sea Beast at full charge, it couldn't stop its momentum in time, ran into the lines, and was promptly snagged deep by the hooks. Thoroughly captured, it thrashed in rage, getting itself more and more tangled in the lines.

Marcie sat fascinated where she rested on the floor, watching this desperate display of animal ferocity being defeated once more by human ingenuity.

"I guess live bait does work best," she said, jauntily. "I was inspired by the jellyfish. You should see their exhibit. Top-notch."

Marcie turned her head to the sound of the basement's double doors being burst open with self-righteous sheriff action as Bronson Stone and a pair of deputies marched into through the entrance, followed by a pensive Doctor Redding.

"Have you…caught it?" Redding asked from behind the deputies.

"Oh, yeah," she said, getting up and dusting herself off. "I hooked a whopper."

The Sea Beast stopped its struggles when it saw everyone approach it, looking as defeated as a monster's face could ever convey.

Marcie carefully reached her hands past the few hooks that didn't bury themselves into the creature's blubbery flesh, took a firm hold of the fins that doubled as its ears and yanked its head off.

The shame-faced visage of an elderly man hung low upon his unmasking. He was defeated and tired. Tired of his old bones trying to fight free of this hastily built trap, tired of schemes and attempted murder, tired of dreams of avarice that got him nowhere.

"Mr. Alphonse Gibson, I presume?" said Marcie.

"Who?' asked Stone, confused as to what had transpired.

"He's one of our janitors," Doctor Redding answered, unsure. "I think."

Alphonse's face twisted into a mask of indignation. "See? That's why I did what I did," he sneered. "Nobody appreciates what I do to keep this place looking the way it does. Those younger janitors couldn't hold a candle to my years of experience, and what do I get for my troubles? 'He's one of our janitors, I think.'

"You did all of this because you felt unappreciated?" Marcie asked him, though no one around him looked entirely convinced about the motive. "Ever heard of a suggestion box?"

"And…also for the money," the janitor added under his breath.

Everyone nodded in agreement to that admission. That was, at least, a worthwhile reason.

Alphonse, realizing that he might as well lay everything on the table, took a breath and started to confess his sins.

"I blow off steam after work in this bar and I guess somebody must've heard me gripe about work, because I was soon approached by this red-headed man. He told me that he was connected to Ocean Land and that the reason that they were treatin' me like old trash was because the administration was thinking of laying off the older workers and replacing us with cleanin' machines."

"He said that I was his favorite janitor," he continued with a wistful smile. "That I reminded him of his father. He said that he would set me up on Easy Street when the hammer fell by making me a part of his little caper. If I did this, retirement was mine and I could fish 'till the cows came home."

"And you believed him?" asked Redding.

"So what if I did?" said Alphonse, his face regaining its sneer. "If Ocean Land was going to throw me into the street, what did I owe them, huh?"

"This mystery man must've needed you because, as janitor, you had better access to most, if not all, of the rooms in the place," Marcie figured.

"Yeah," he said, a touch of bitter regret souring his voice. "I was given a tiny, hidden camera and told to put it someplace where it could see The Vault's security keypad, if someone were to use it."

"I know," she agreed. "Schrödinger smelled something on the wall of the Vault room and when I analyzed it, it turned out to be spirit gum, an adhesive. Coming back, I measured the distance and angle of where the gum was on the wall. It lined up perfectly with the Vault's security keypad. The only thing that would make sense to stick up there would be your hidden camera."

"Then, I was given a false ID card to replace the one I was given by Ocean Land," he continued. "Only this one had a computer virus in its magnetic strip, so that when I swiped it at the employees' entrance before going to work, it would infect the building's security system one hour before my shift ended."

"Well, that explains the security camera failure," Redding mused.

"When that happened, I would go into the Vault room, use the code given to me by the mystery man, by way of the hidden camera earlier, take the canister, hide it in a paper bag, and then, after work, meet up with an associate of his at the bar for the trade off," Alphonse said.

"But something happened, didn't it," asked Marcie.

"Yeah, something happened, all right," the old man sulked. "A guard was coming into the lab. If he saw me with that can, I'd be fired, if I was lucky. I panicked and hid the canister in an air vent. After I pulled the wool over the guard's eyes and he left, I opened the vent to get the can. Talk about bad luck. The ventilation shaft was sloped, so the can rolled down to who knows where."

"The canister has a refrigerator built into it, but you had to get to it before the batteries ran out," Marcie said.

"Yep. Then, I figured it out. If I could scare everyone that got in my way, then I could be left alone, and I could do a floor-by-floor search for it in the building with an old diagram of the vent system I stole from Maintenance."

"I heard about the Sea Beast rumors while I worked among the scientists, so I went a bought a Fish Man costume, went down to the beach and soaked in the water. Y'know, to get that real, deep-down, fishy smell. I even lucked out when some seaweed get stuck in the suit. Then, I came back as the Sea Beast and scared the heck outta you and everybody else while I looked through the ventilation system."

"That's why that piece of paper I found was so important," Marcie related. "It was your old diagram. You must've dropped it when you were busy tracking the cotton candy we used to catch you through the basement."

"Anyway," the janitor continued. "I eventually found it. It had rolled down into the basement's vent system. Trouble was, but I couldn't reach inside to get it. Lucky for me, though, I ran into that talkin' cat down here one evening. I knew that if I could get that cat into the vents, he could get that canister for me."

Marcie brightened with revelation. "That's why you kept coming after me. You wanted Schrödinger and I was just in the way."

Alphonse was taken a little aback at the knowledge of the cat's name. "Schroeder, huh? That's what you called him? Didn't think he could play the piano."

"No," Marcie corrected. "That's what he calls himself, and it's Schrödinger."

"Pheh!" the old man scoffed. "Anyway, how did you know it was me in all this get-up?"

"I'll tell you," Marcie said. "When we first met, you told us earlier that you had to finish working because it was almost time for your lunch break. When we ran into the Sea Beast at my father's theme park, I wondered how did it know where we were. Now, it dawned on me that you must have followed me when I drove to the park on your lunch break. You would have had plenty of time to do it."

"Then, there was the death trap you put me and Doctor Redding through." She could see the doctor shiver from the corner of her eye. "You were practically showing off with those fishing skills of yours. The accuracy to wound me in a tank full of sharks and take out our raft at the same time? That's when I knew it had to be you, since, on the two times that we met, you mentioned your love of fishing. Three, if you count just a few minutes ago.

She then added, "Oh, I also broke into your locker, by the way, and found all of those cool rods in there. You're just a fishing fool, aren't you? They really came in handy when I built this trap."

With authority, Marcie turned to Sheriff Stone and told him, "You can take him away, now."

Stone took out a pocket knife and began cutting Alphonse free of the lines, then he stopped when he noticed who was telling whom what to do.

"You listen here, Miss Smarty-boots!" he barked in Marcie's face. "I'm the sheriff here and I'll say who takes who away!"

Marcie gave a crisp, if mocking, salute and said, "Yes, sir!"

With a growl, Stone finished extricating the old janitor from the cut lines. As the criminal was flanked by the deputies and walked by Marcie, Alphonse himself growled, "It would've been such a sweet caper, if you and that dumb cat weren't so darn meddlesome!"

"Cat!" Marcie cried out in remembrance. She still hadn't found Schrödinger. She turned to Alphonse. "Where is Schrödinger?"

The old man knew that he was going to pay for his crimes, but he knew an opportunity for revenge when he saw it.

"Do you think I'm gonna tell you?" he asked, coldly. "I hope you never see that stupid cat ever again."

"C'mon, animal lover," Stone said as he followed his deputies and his charge out of the basement.

Marcie's stomach almost ached with that pronouncement. She remembered that he needed Schrödinger to look through the vents in the basement and that she found Alphonse all the way down the hall.

She wasted no time. She ran back, calling the cat's name, her mind playing the direst circumstances to befall him, such as getting stuck somewhere he couldn't maneuver out of and eventually...

"Marcie!" came the welcome sound of Schrödinger. "Could you be a dear and get me out of here?"

Marcie skidded to a stop under the open vent she heard the voice from. With her arms open and a grateful smile to greet him, Schrödinger happily leaped out of the vent into her embrace.

Doctor Redding huffed behind her from his run and asked between puffs of exhalation, "Did...you find...the canister?"

"Get me back up there," the cat said, to which the girl obeyed. He crept into the vent and all was quiet for a few moments, then came the sound of something rolling and bumping into the corners of the ducting.

"Head's up!" Schrödinger warned Marcie, who readied herself and caught a steel-grey canister with a steady green light on its side showing the status of its refrigeration.

She handed the canister over to a overly pleased Redding, who had to fight from dancing a jig.

"One canister with intact sturgeon eggs," Marcie said, feeling quite pleased herself with what happened over the course of a day.

"Oh!" Redding breathed reverently. "I promise you, you two will have a permanent pass to visit Ocean Land for as long as you want. You can even visit the laboratories. The administration will certainly trust someone like you after today."

"Thanks, Doctor," she said, catching Schrödinger once more. "We really appreciate it. Don't we, Schrödinger?"

"Oh, most definitely," said the cat, licking his chops. "By the by, what do you do with your dead fish specimens. We shouldn't have all of that go to waste, now should we?"

Redding gave a thought. Bio-recycling?

"We'll think about it," came his answer.

With the criminal caught, the Sea Beast no more, and himself safe in the arms of a good and clever girl, Schrödinger pleasantly thought that it was good enough, for now.


	10. 10

_10~_

Marcie crawled awkwardly through the innards of the tilt-a-whirl later that night after the patrons had all left Fleach's Folly Factory.

"Have you reached it yet?" Schrödinger asked from outside the ride, keeping a watch for security.

"Almost," she answered. "And keep your voice down, will ya?"

Navigating via her penlight, she pulled herself across a defunct gear the size of a dinner table and could see over it to the wrecked speed governor up ahead.

Marcie finally reached the sabotaged device and twisted her body to free her cell phone from her jacket. Once she did so, she shined the light on the cut/broken part that doomed the ride entirely.

She pressed the camera button and waited. The pre-recorded sound of a camera's shutter closing to announce that a picture was taken was not to be heard. She pressed it again. Silence.

Marcie's mind ran every reasonable explanation as to why the phone failed her, from battery issues to simple wear and tear. Then, the reason hit her like an unexpected punch in the gut. Her little dip in the shark tank earlier submerged the phone, killing it and any hope, short of an engineering report from Eleanor, of showing her father the presence of foul play in the park.

Sadly, she twisted around and freed herself from the base of the tilt-a-whirl.

"Did you get it?" Schrödinger asked as Marcie dusted herself off.

"Nope. The tank water killed the phone, she reported, dejectedly"

Schrödinger stood up, saying, "Hmm, it's just as well. Water and cell phones do have a unhappy history together." Then, without preamble, he began to walk off.

"Whoa! Hey, where are you going?" Marcie asked, frowning. "Don't you want to come home with me? I can feed you, if that's what you want."

The cat gave an enigmatic smile and then sat down for a moment. "A offer to tempt the hardiest of vagabonds, but I can't settle down just yet. There's something I have to do in this town first."

"Wait, you can tell me. What do you have to do?" she asked, hoping she could help. "This town could be boring at times and a little excitement can go a long way."

He said nothing.

Marcie realized just then that when it came to cats, she had as much chance of stopping one from doing or not doing something as she did possessing the power of flight, but she had to, at least, say something to him. "Okay, you know when we met, I didn't have to help you with your little problem, but after I heard what Alphonse said about being recruited by this mystery red-head, I realized, that's what we were. Cat's-paws. Only I was asked by an actual cat."

"Guilty," Schrödinger purred. He then got up, saying in parting, "Because of what you've done for me, I trust you, Marcie Fleach, and that means that we _will_ certainly see each again."

Then the Siamese smoothly walked away, leaving Marcie to stand alone with the ghost of a suddenly lonely heart haunting her.

Why did he leave?

 _'Like V,'_ she thought.

Didn't he like her?

 _'Didn't V?'_ she thought.

She could take care of him, if he'd just given her a chance.

 _'Like I could...with V,'_ she thought.

Marcie almost didn't hear the sound of a mammoth truck pulling into the park. She awoke from her morose revelry to think of hiding behind the dark hulk of the tilt-a-whirl, which gave her a good vantage point in which to spy on this unexpected visitor.

It was a flat-bed truck carrying something very long and massive, covered completely by a dark tarpaulin. Behind it, drove a pick-up truck full of laborers and a tall, trundling crane, both of which parked near the flat-bed, the crane's engine idling.

Men disembarked from the pick-up and swarmed over the flat-bed like worker ants, disrobing it and attaching heavy steel cables to the skin of the tower of metal that rested on the vehicle.

As Marcie watched, the cables were connected to the crane, and with careful and strenuous applications of human and mechanized labor, the tower was pulled from the truck, balanced, and erected on its selected spot in the park.

The beams of work lights illuminated the surface of the structure and Marcie could make out the words, "The Rolling Boulder."

She backed away from the tilt-a-whirl, deciding that she had seen enough without risking discovery, and took a circuitous route behind surviving concession stands and other rides to hide her departure.

 _'The Rolling Boulder?'_ she though on her way to the parking lot. _'Dad didn't say anything about that.'_ Maybe that was the reason for the stand-offish nature of the morning.

 _'He was probably just stressed out about this new ride,'_ she decide to convince herself as she kept a watch for workers. They were still busy, now attaching cables to the dead tilt-a-whirl and preparing to drag it onto the flat-bed.

Marcie made it to her car, and soon the Clue Cruiser putted away from the park.

* * *

"I didn't know that we have a new ride," Marcie said to her father, pleasantly, hoping to smooth things on her part for that morning. "Rolling Boulder? Why didn't you tell me?"

Winslow ignored her as reclined on his chair in the living room.

 _'Okay,'_ she thought, dejectedly. _'I gave it a shot.'_ Better to just report on what she saw. At least, he'll know.

"Dad, I think we were sabotaged," Marcie said, solemnly.

Winslow rolled his eyes up to look at her. Gems of hidden anger that Marcie hadn't notice. "How so?"

"I went to the park to check out the tilt-a-whirl. The speed governor was tampered with. Heck, it was cut off," she said.

"Do you have proof?"

Marcie was slightly taken aback by that. Since when did she need to prove her word to him? In the past, her reports were usually enough for an investigation. Now, things were getting so personal with him.

"Well, I saw it, and I tried to take pictures of it, but my cell phone died on me," Marcie defended. "But, if you don't believe me, ask Eleanor to have her people go through it on Monday. They'll show you."

"It doesn't matter, Marcie. Whether it broke down or not, it doesn't matter."

That didn't add up at all. It wasn't like him. "Why?" she asked, incredulously.

"I told you," he maintained. "It doesn't matter."

A spike of angry indignation flared within Marcie. It was bad enough that Schrödinger became mysterious and left her after all they went through without telling her why, but this was her father. He shouldn't... _can't_...keep secrets from her, at least about things concerning the park.

"No, Dad," she countered with a little steel in her voice. "It does matter. It's our park. You work hard to keep it running and don't I help you with that?"

"Oh, _now_ you have an interest in the park," Winslow muttered. "Before, you'd move Heaven and Earth to distance yourself from it. Now that your gravy train is starting to derail, you want to fix the tracks."

Gravy train? Where was this coming from?

"Dad, what in the world are you talking about? I've been with you and the park since I was little. Ever since Mom left us, I helped you and the park. Through thick and thin, I was there."

"You were a little girl, where were you going to go?" he said, simply.

The cold logic of that unexpected statement stabbed her deeper than she was prepared for. It took the wind from her next arguments and made her heart ache bitterly. Was this all he saw in her? A laborer he was lucky enough to help bring into this world for the satisfaction of the park?

There was no talking to him right now. Sanctuary was just upstairs, in her bedroom. All she had to do... _wanted to do_ …was get in the last word.

"Well, I'm bigger, now." she said, coolly. "And right now, I'm going to my room."

Marcie expected a challenge from her father, a command to stay where she was until he told her otherwise. But, he just said, "Fine," and then said nothing else.

She turned her back to him and walked up the stairs, although, halfway up, she braved one last glance at him for the night, to see him still sulking in his chair, like a sad, beaten king.

A king, Marcie hadn't known yet, that was about to lose his kingdom.

There were hills on the outskirts of Crystal Cove that lent their beauty to the town. Some were use for stargazing and picturesque views of the town at night, other were utilized for more intimate pursuits.

Schrödinger walked up one of those hills and rested upon its crest, looking out over subtly shining lights of Crystal Cove. For such a quiet town, it had its share of energy, he thought.

Energy...

He took a knowing look over at one section of town. At night, it could be seen somewhat better that during the day. The rainbow-colored distortion that hovered miles above the town.

It had grow noticeably larger than when it was detected many months past, and the cat knew that what he saw was just the part of the phenomenon that was visible, the rest had, and was, continuing to spread its invisible wall around Crystal Cove, strengthening its essence day by day. But why was it here? What purpose did its existence serve?

Those questions and more ran around Schrödinger's genius brain. He only hoped that he was smart enough to solve this mystery before these unwitting citizens became victims of it.


End file.
